China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower

by Frank Dikötter

As its polluting factories closed down, with some literally dismantled, shipped to China and reassembled there, Germany emerged as a leader of the green movement. Chancellor Angela Merkel was nicknamed the ‘climate chancellor’, pushing international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. In the Ruhr Valley, once dominated by coal mines and steel mills, rivers were nursed back to health, contaminated soil cleaned up and turned into parkland. Other countries, too, appeared to benefit from lower carbon emissions as steel production was moved to China. Yet according to the European Parliament, the less efficient mills in China emitted three times as much carbon dioxide for every ton of steel produced as did their counterparts in Germany. Moreover, since China had a socialist economy, once the steel mills were up and running, they rarely shut down, regardless of markets and demand.