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## Eco-City Initiatives in China

China is making intensive investment in the environmental field as a national project. The most exemplary case of this initiative is the Tianjin Eco-city (Tianjinshengtaicheng). The Tianjin Eco-city, the first environmental city plan led by the Chinese government, was launched in 2007 as the joint project with the government of Singapore. The project, set to be completed 10 to 15 years, calls for a total investment of 250 billion yuan (about ¥3.2 trillion), and 350,000 people are expected to live in the city with a site area of some 30 square kilometers. Environmentally, condominiums, office buildings and all other buildings to be set up in the city are required to comply with energy-saving standards, and the Tianjin Eco-city is to become a model city for energy-saving and environmental conservation, with 20% of electricity supply coming from renewable energy such as photovoltaic and wind power generation. China has also designated the “Gangzhuxiang” group of cities made up by Gangsha, Zhushou and Xiangtan cities in Hunan Province and another group of cities led by Wuhan City in Hubei Province as the demonstrative experimental group of cities for the “two-type society” (the society that is resource-saving type and at the same time environment-friendly type). In the group of cities led

variety of goods and services in the same manner as eco-points for home electric appliances.

Eco-car subsidies are designed to subsidize the purchase of new vehicles with high environmental performance (environment-responsive cars), including replacement. Together with eco-car tax reductions already in place, the eco-car subsidization scheme is producing the significant economic and environmental conservation effects. The subsidization scheme was also extended to remain effective until September 30, 2010.

In part because of the impacts of the eco-points for home electric appliances and eco-car subsidies, personal consumption began to show some signs of recovery, with these systems underpinning the business conditions and employment in the home electronics and automotive industries. The market shares of environment-conscious products expanded, with, for example, hybrid vehicles capturing the biggest share in domestic sales of passenger cars in FY 2009, for the first time ever.

☐ Market expansion overseas, particularly in Asia

Other countries, in particular the Asian region, which has close geographical and economic ties to Japan, accounts for over half of the world's population and is seeing rapid economic growth, but also is confronted with serious environmental problems, including air pollution, water contamination, inappropriate disposal of wastes and deforestation. And sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions and increased waste discharges in the region are impacting the environment on a global scale.

Japan can conceivably help facilitate Asia’s sustainable Rendering of “Tianjin Eco-city” (Tianjinshengtaicheng)

Source: Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city website

by Wuhan, a total of 459 environmental conservation projects are set to be implemented over a period of 10 years from 2010 with a total investment of some 500 billion yuan (about ¥6.5 trillion).

As seen above, efforts to deal with environment problems are now being made at the city level in China, which will likely mean a further intensification of competition over the environmental industry going forward. Amid these developments, it is hoped that Japanese companies, armed with their environmental technologies at the world's highest levels, will proactively advance into China's environmental market.

development by sharing Japan’s experiences and wisdom to have overcome pollution problems while sustaining economic growth and also proactively extending Japan’s excellent environmental technologies to the region. This can be expected to lead to an expansion of exports to Asia, which has the massive environmental market.

As seen above, the environmental market is expected to expand further, centering on Asia, European countries such as Denmark, Spain, Finland and Germany, are also moving to actively promote exports of environmental products and services by placing the environmental industry at the core of their export strategies, with their governments fostering and supporting the environmental industry (Table 5-4-1).

In Japan, for example, the “Hatoyama Initiative” announced at the $ 15^{th} $ session of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15) in Copenhagen in December 2009 as assistance to developing countries grappling with global warming says Japan, with the public and private sectors as one, will make a fair share of contributions by leveraging Japan’s excellent environmental technologies in line with the basic thinking that support with private-sector financing and technologies is essential to push forward with powerful efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. This initiative can place Japan ahead of the world’s other countries by further polishing its technologies to cope with climate change and also can help spread Japan’s technology and knowledge about both mitigation and adaptation to the entire world, which may