Researchers wonder whether the Yangtze River Delta, China's economic powerhouse, can sustain its rapid growth since the region relies mostly on the manufacturing sector to fuel its economic boom.

 

"The economic miracle in most of the cities in the region resulted from manufacturing and industrial expansion, while an unsound economic structure affects the sustainability of local development," a group of researchers concluded in a recent study.

 

Aimed at investigating the region's sustainability from economic, social and environmental perspectives, the research was headed by Professor Tan Meiqing from Jiangsu Province's Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA).

 

Out of the 16 cities in the region, the research found that only Zhoushan, in Zhejiang Province, and Shanghai and Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province, are economically balanced cities able to sustain their growth in years to come.

 

Other cities, especially Suzhou in Jiangsu Province and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, are excessively dependent on manufacturing industry to drive their economy.

 

"That needs change as many environmental problems have occurred because of the uneven development structure," Tan said at Friday's urban sustainability forum held in Wuxi in Jiangsu Province.

 

The Yangtze River Delta region is an industrial base in steel, chemical and petrochemical production as well as building materials manufacturing. This industrial structure largely determines its high energy consumption and associated environmental challenges.

 

It was also pointed out on Friday that both sides of the Yangtze River have become locations for chemical and petrochemical factories. Together with the Yellow River, the Yangtze River's banks have housed nearly 70 per cent of such factories in China, which poses a huge environmental threat.

 

Meanwhile, due to rapid economic development in the Yangtze River Delta, limited natural resources and worsening environmental conditions are becoming more evident.

 

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) said major environmental problems in the region have been caused by the worsening contamination of major rivers and lakes in addition to atmospheric pollutants, especially sulphur dioxide, which causes acid rain.

 

"It is time we treat both environmental protection and economic development as equally important," Yang Chaofei, director general of the Department of Policy and Law of SEPA, told China Daily.

 

(China Daily July 29, 2006)