Why one of China’s poorest places has highest ‘material footprint’ per person
- Domestic consumption and investment indicator shows Qinghai province ahead of wealthier neighbours
- Beijing’s development policy in western China may have been key, researchers say
Scientists have found a surprising pattern in China’s “material footprint” that may shed new light on its economic boom.
Material footprint is an indicator that accounts for the raw materials – fossil fuels, biomass, metals and other substances such as sand and gravel sourced from China and overseas – that are used to satisfy domestic consumption and capital investment.
In the first study of China’s material footprint by region, a team led by Zhu Bing, professor of chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and a member of the International Resource Panel of the United Nations Environment Programme, found that capital investment in the poorer provinces may have helped maintain China’s rapid economic development.
One of their discoveries revealed that in some poorer western provinces the per capita material footprint was larger than in the more heavily industrialised and wealthier east, and in some cases matched levels in Western countries.
In a paper that appeared on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), they said that in northwestern Qinghai province, the estimated 2010 material footprint of 36 tonnes per person was the same as the United States average.