The Chinese government has recently issued a circular to call on various departments and organizations to buy products which are made in China. This is a great measure to promote sustainable development in China but not protectionism. Why?
Because it is a change of consumption style and a good way to reduce footprint. This method will let consumers to choose what to buy and whom to buy from. And with the government procurement, it will be more effective in terms of scale and capacity of consumption. As many people know that one of the important measures in promoting sustainable development is to mobilize the government to buy products which are produced locally. This way will reduce the transport and save energy.
To buy products which are made in China, instead of abroad will save a lot of energy, thus reduce carbon footprint and should be hailed as a good measure.
In western countries for example in Britain, the Sustainable Development Commission has tried very hard to push their government and other organizations to buy products produced locally. For example, they persuaded the hospital to buy locally produced beef to support the local business, not buying bottled water is also a measure to avoid carbon footprint because bottled water is made with a lot of energy for the making and transportation while the jarred water is just obtained locally. It was difficult to push to buy locally in some western countries because the locally produced products are very expansive. For example the locally produced beef is much more expansive than imported from Ireland or New Zealand.
Similar cases are found in Sweden. Many locally produced products are more expansive than imported ones. Thus if one chooses from price perspective, they would choose those imported one for example the imported strawberry is always cheaper than the Swedish grown. But Swedish people are more patriotic in this sense and mostly rather like to buy the Swedish grown strawberry and proudly say ‘this is Swedish strawberry! Many people are also proudly to buy a Volvo car or ‘green car’ because they believe their car is better in terms of safety and environment. More importantly, the consumers want to make their own choice for certain purpose.
In China, generally speaking domestically made products are much cheaper than imported one. But there were time and period that people trust imported products more than domestic ones especially when it is government procurement. For example, government officials preferred to buy an expensive Mercedes or BMW than locally produced car which can lead to corruption and abuse of government money. In this sense, I think the Chinese government’s new procurement policy is quite right because if they buy domestically made cars, especially green cars, it will be substantially promoting China’s car or green car industry, as well as reduce transportation.
In Sweden, some government procurement also requires to buy green cars or certain things. Thus government procurement is a good way to guide the consumption trend. As China is opening up and improving product quality, there is nothing wrong to buy products made in China. It will save a lot of energy and reduce footprint substantially.
If the government procurement can be implemented effectively, it will be great. Some western people’s understanding of buying locally means to raise protectionism shows that they don’t really understand the situation in China. I think the policy should be applauded as it will reduce footprint and alleviate climate change. This is a good example for the change of consumption, too.
By Xuefei Chen, People’s Daily Online, Stockholm.
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