I recently had a talk/argument with someone about China and the environment. Her position was that China is choosing to destroy the environment for the whole globe and that they could choose not to. My position was that China's main concern is jobs and that they will clean up their industries, namely coal, when they can afford to. (Which is basically what we did 20-30 years ago.)

This hybrid issue could be very interesting to watch. On one hand, China lacks a robust research/marketplace. On the other hand, it also lacks an entrenched status quo to resist changes.

The Leapfrog Strategy

Fuel-cell advocates say China is uniquely positioned to jump past petroleum and straight into an alternative-fuel future

By JANE LANHEE LEE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

July 25, 2005

Fuel cells, advocates argue, are China's best bet for limiting its dependence on petroleum and cleaning up its air. Moreover, they say, China is uniquely positioned to take advantage of fuel cells, thanks to a seeming disadvantage: the nation's underdeveloped automotive and energy industries.

In developed countries, gasoline and diesel distribution networks are so extensive that converting them to supply hydrogen will be costly for energy companies. But China's car culture is new, so it doesn't have a big fueling infrastructure in place. Fuel-cell advocates argue that this gives the country a golden opportunity to leapfrog ahead of petroleum and create a network of fuel-cell stations instead. If fuel cells are the future, they say, why build a full-blown support system for gasoline?

In developed countries, "the infrastructure investment is so huge, and inertia so great, that it's very difficult to do things differently," says Dan Sperling, professor of engineering and environmental policy at U.C. Davis. "There's probably only one developing country in the world that could even conceive of [leapfrogging ahead]. And that's China."
...
Already, some foreign companies are considering taking the plunge. Ballard Power Systems Inc., the world's leading fuel-cell research firm, with investors including Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG, is eyeing China for its future. Ballard, of Burnaby, British Columbia, claims that it will begin making commercially viable automotive fuel cells by 2010.