http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update45.htm
Lester R. Brown
Although the United States has long consumed the lion's share of
the
world's resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese
economy
surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of
one
resource after another.
Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities--grain
and
meat, oil and coal, and steel--consumption in China has already
eclipsed
that of the United States in all but oil. China has opened a wide
lead
with grain: 382 million tons to 278 million tons for the United
States
last year. Among the big three grains, the world's most populous
country
leads in the consumption of both wheat and rice, and trails the
United
States only in corn use.
Although eating hamburgers is a defining element of the U.S. lifestyle,
China's 2004 intake of 64 million tons of meat has climbed far above
the
38 million tons consumed in the United States. While U.S. meat intake
is
rather evenly distributed between beef, pork, and poultry, in China
pork
totally dominates. Indeed, half the world's pigs are found in China.
With steel, a key indicator of industrial development, use in China
has
soared and is now more than twice that of the United States: 258
million
tons to 104 million tons in 2003. As China's population urbanizes
and as
the country has moved into the construction phase of development,
building
hundreds of thousands of factories and high-rise apartment and office
buildings, steel consumption has climbed to levels not seen in any
other
country. ( See data at http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update45_data.htm
)
With oil, the United States is still solidly in the lead with consumption
triple that of China's--20.4 million barrels per day to 6.5 million
barrels in 2004. But while oil use in the United States expanded
by only
15 percent from 1994 to 2004, use in the new industrial giant more
than
doubled. Having recently eclipsed Japan as an oil consumer, China
is now
second only to the United States.
Looking at energy use in China means also considering coal, which
supplies
nearly two thirds of energy demand. Here China's burning of 800
million
tons easily exceeds the 574 million tons burned in the United States.
With
its coal use far exceeding that of the United States and with its
oil and
natural gas use climbing fast, it is only a matter of time until
China
will also be the world's top emitter of carbon. Soon the world may
have
two major climate disrupters.
In addition to steel, China also leads in the use of other metals,
such as
aluminum and copper. Not only has China overtaken the United States
in use
of these materials, but it is widening the gap, leaving the United
States
in a distant second place.
In another key area, fertilizer--essentially nitrates and potash--China's
use is double that of the United States, 41.2 million tons to 19.2
million
tons in 2004. In the use of the nutrients that feed our crops, China
is
now far and away the world leader.
In China's consumer economy, sales of almost everything from electronic
goods to automobiles are soaring. Nowhere is the explosive growth
more
visible than in the electronics sector. In 1996 China had 7 million
cell
phones and the United States had 44 million. By 2003 China had rocketed
to
269 million versus 159 million in the United States. In effect,
China is
leapfrogging the traditional land-line telephone stage of communications
development, going directly to mobile phones.
The use of personal computers is now also taking off in China. After
a
late start, the number of personal computers jumped to 36 million
in 2003
compared with 190 million in the United States. But with the number
of
computers in use doubling every 28 months, it will only be a matter
of
time before China, a country of 1.3 billion people, overtakes the
United
States, which has a population of 297 million.
With household appliances, such as television sets and refrigerators,
China has long since moved ahead of the United States. By 2000,
for
example, TV sets in China outnumbered those in the United States
by 374
million to 243 million. With refrigerators, perhaps the most costly
household appliance, production in China overtook that of the United
States in 2000.
Among the leading consumer products, China trails the United States
only
in automobiles. By 2003, it had 24 million motor vehicles, scarcely
one
tenth the 226 million on U.S. roads. But with car sales doubling
over the
last two years, China's fleet is growing fast.
And the race is far from over. With a per capita annual income of
$5,300,
one seventh the $38,000 in the United States, China has a long way
to go
to reach U.S. per capita consumption levels. For example, despite
China's
wide lead in total meat intake, the meat consumed per person is
only 49
kilograms (108 pounds) a year compared with 127 kilograms (279 pounds)
in
the United States. As Chinese incomes rise at a world record pace,
use of
foodstuffs, energy, raw materials, and sales of consumer goods are
continuing to climb.
China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron
ore,
aluminum, copper, platinum, phosphates, potash, oil and natural
gas,
forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for
its
world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put
China at
the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite
for
materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping
rates
as well.
The new industrial giant's need for access to raw materials and
energy is
shaping its foreign policy and security planning. Strategic relationships
with resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia,
Indonesia, and Australia are built around long-term supply contracts
for
products such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and timber.
These
strategic ties it is forming are welcomed in countries like Brazil
as a
counterweight to U.S. influence.
China's eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should
be seen
as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world
economic
leader. Its record-high domestic savings and its huge trade surplus
with
the United States are but two of the more visible manifestations
of its
economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying
the
U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the
largest
fiscal deficit in history.
The United States, the world's leading debtor nation, is now heavily
dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt.
If China
ever decides to divert this capital surplus elsewhere, either to
internal
investment or to the development of oil, gas, and mineral resources
elsewhere in the world, the U.S. economy will be in trouble.
China is no longer just a developing country. It is an emerging
economic
superpower, one that is writing economic history. If the last century
was
the American century, this one looks to be the Chinese century.
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