At a construction site in northern China, a billboard boasts of a “liveable city” where residents can drink tap water, travel on clean energy public transport and enjoy acres of parkland.
For now, the ambitious “eco-city,” covering 30km2 of non-arable salt pans and former fishing villages, has more cranes than wind turbines and will not be finished for at least another decade.
However, its developers hope the settlement near the port city of Tianjin will serve as an ultra-efficient alternative to ill-planned and heavily polluting mega-cities not only elsewhere in the country, but around the world.
PHOTO: AFP
“We hope to influence our neighbors,” said Goh Chye Boon, chief executive of Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment & Development Co. “With the right ingredients, with the right eco mindset, I think together we can change the environment.”
The governments of China and Singapore have combined their expertise and finances to develop the future city, which has a planned population of 350,000 and includes schools, medical facilities and business districts.
Foreign companies such as Japan’s Hitachi and Dutch electronics giant Philips will provide green technology for the development, where buildings will be insulated and have double-glazed windows to increase energy efficiency.
Nearly two-thirds of household waste will be recycled and 20 percent of the city’s power will come from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar — with the rest coming from other sources such as highly polluting coal.
Treated sewage will be channeled into a lake which will supplement water supplies for local communities.
“Eco-cities are needed because China is facing a huge challenge of pollution,” said Hiroaki Suzuki, a top specialist in the Finance, Economic and Urban Department at the World Bank, which is assisting on the project.
“China’s serious pollution problems do not mean that it cannot develop an eco-city,” he said.
Top leaders in Beijing also hope the project will serve as a model for a long-term solution to the country’s ballooning urban population, which is putting enormous pressure on already strained water and energy resources.
China is undergoing an unprecedented urbanization process as hundreds of millions of people have headed to fast-growing metropolitan areas since the nation’s economy embarked on a fast-paced growth track more than 30 years ago.
To handle the massive influx of people, China may need to invest up to US$3.6 trillion in urban infrastructure by 2020, state media said last month, citing a report by the state think-tank China Development Research Foundation.
Greenpeace supports the development of “eco-cities” as a way to handle urban overcrowding, which it says could prevent China from curbing its world-leading carbon emissions and meeting its ambitious energy targets.
“It’s a really good idea because that is where change has to happen,” said Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaign manager for the environmental watchdog in China.
However, Yang cautioned it was very difficult for Beijing to develop truly low-carbon cities when there was no clear definition of the term, and given that the country was still developing.
China has already broken ground on a separate ecologically friendly settlement that has yet to been finished.
In 2005, then-British prime minister Tony Blair and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) agreed the two countries could collaborate on building the world’s first so-called “eco-city” Dongtan, near Shanghai.
The “city of the future” was meant to be showcased at this year’s World Expo in Shanghai but the settlement remains in the planning stages.
Plans for dozens of other low-carbon “eco-cities” and towns are springing up around the country, as developers rush to cash in on the green movement and government authorities seek to attract foreign investors to their regions.
China recently carried out low-carbon technology pilot projects in five provinces and eight municipalities, with the aim of rolling them out nationwide, said the country’s chief climate change official, Xie Zhenhua (謝振華).
“We hope that through our concerted efforts, we can work out incentives and policy measures that support upgrading of technologies and changing people’s consumption patterns,” Xie told reporters this week.
Goh insists the Tianjin development will not be another Dongtan — construction of the first stage is under way, with the first batch of apartments on sale and residents due to start moving in as early as next year.
“We are far from the Dongtan example — we have got over the master plan stage and are executing it now,” he said.
At the sprawling site, several buildings are under construction, some streets have been paved and marked, trees planted and wind-solar powered street lights erected.
It is a long way from the miniaturized model on display in the exhibition hall, which shows hundreds of high-rise buildings surrounded by 1,500 hectares of parks and wetlands, broken up by crystal-clear waterways.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the