5:00AM Thursday October 18, 2007
By Peter Huck
One of the intriguing questions sinologists might ponder this week, as the Chinese Communist Party holds its party congress, is if climate change is on the agenda.
Given the shadowy world of Chinese politics, it is hard to know. "The Communist Party is at an odd junction right now," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "They're very divided about exactly how much more of this full-steam-ahead economic development they can do without reining some of it in."
For China's extraordinary progress has bequeathed a monstrous legacy of environmental degradation.
Last week China's state media admitted that the massive Three Gorges Dam, a showpiece engineering feat on the Yangtze River, threatens "environmental catastrophe," necessitating the evacuation of four million people.
This blow is hardly welcome as the world's media focuses on next year's Olympics. But therein, believes Garrett, lies an eco-opportunity for President Hu Jintao....
