International Herald Tribune: Sustainable growth

China's next leadership may have plans to help the middle class population grow from 300 million to 800 million by 2025, but the Chinese middle class should avoid living the American dream (a big car, a big house and a Big Mac for all), or else we would need another planet for humankind, says an article in International Herald Tribune. Excerpts:

"Success in the 'American Dream'," notes Peggy Liu, the founder of the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, or Juccce, "used to just mean a house, a family of four and two cars, but now it's escalated to conspicuous consumption as epitomized by Kim Kardashian.

China simply cannot follow that path or the planet will be stripped bare of natural resources to make all that the Chinese consumers want to consume.

Liu, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and former McKinsey consultant, argues that Chinese today are yearning to create a new national identity, one that merges traditional Chinese values, like balance, respect and flow, with its modern urban reality. She believes that the creation of a sustainable "Chinese Dream" that breaks the historic link between income growth and rising resource consumption could be a part of that new identity, one that could resonate around the world.

That means, among other things, better public transportation, better public spaces and better housing that encourages dense vertical buildings, which are more energy efficient and make shared services easier to deliver, and more e-learning and e-commerce opportunities that reduce commuting.

Emphasizing access versus ownership isn't just more sustainable, it helps ease friction from the differences between rich and poor. Indeed, Juccce translates Chinese Dream as "Harmonious and Happy Dream" in Mandarin. ("Green" doesn't sell in China.)

China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) has set impressive sustainability goals for cutting energy and water intensity per unit of GDP. All of these goals are critical to the greening of China, but they are not sufficient, argues Liu.

With retail sales growing 17 percent a year since 2005 and urban incomes up 150 percent in the last decade, "the government must also have a plan to steer consumer behavior toward a sustainable path," adds Liu.