China Prepares New Fuel Economy Standards Stricter Than US - NYT

GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 17 — "The Chinese government is preparing to impose minimum fuel economy standards on new cars for the first time, and the rules will be significantly more stringent than those in the United States, according to Chinese experts involved in drafting them.

The new standards are intended both to save energy and to force automakers to introduce the latest hybrid engines and other technology in China, in hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising dependence on oil imports from volatile countries in the Middle East.

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The Chinese initiative comes at a time when Congress is close to completing work on a major energy bill that would make no significant changes in America's fuel economy rules for vehicles. The Chinese standards, in general, call for new cars, vans and sport utility vehicles to get as much as two miles a gallon of fuel more in 2005 than the average required in the United States, and about five miles more in 2008.

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'China has become an important importer of oil so it has to have regulations to save energy,' said Mr. Zhang, who is also deputy secretary of the 39-member interagency committee that approved the rules at a meeting this month. China was a net oil exporter until a decade ago, but its output has not kept up with soaring demand. It now depends on imports of oil for one-third of its needs, mainly from Saudi Arabia and Angola. Before the war, Iraq was also an important supplier. By comparison, the United States now imports about 55 percent of the oil it uses."

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NY Times

High fuel efficiency will now clearly be "Communist".

Imagining a GOP legislator in the future: "Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves vehicles that get decent mileage? It comes from Beijing, from China. It comes straight out of the pit of hell."*

:eyes:

*inspired by the quote about public education and "Russia" from Texas GOP legislator Debbie Riddle

They'll doubtless scold the Chinese for "preparing to destroy the economy", "imposing heavy-handed regulation and ignoring market solutions", or perhaps "letting government make choices that free people should be making."

Who knows, they might indeed even call it "communism"!

We should send Trent Lott over to China.

And we should be ashamed because it's coming from a Communist country.

Way too many 2 cycle scooters (125cc max) that are worn out and spewing unburned hydrocarbons. Their industrial revolution is creating really nasty air/water pollution problems. Rather progressive of them to attack the problem in this manner.

The US, under Republican leadership, are quite happy to put off the day of reckoning here. They are far more interested in maximizing profits than MPG.

They've been salivating at the Chinese market for years, and are now busy as the proverbial beavers in opening up new factories over there. The problem is (as the article noted in the case of VW), that there's not much they can do about these efficiency standards. If they want to sell cars & trucks there, they have to meet the standards, and will have to build more efficient vehicles.

So, how will they then make the argument that it's JUST IMPOSSIBLE to meet such standards in the United States?

Of course, I'm assuming that fuel efficiency standards will resurface in Congressional debate before I have a long, white beard - a big assumption.

Our corporations will sue their government to get them to open their market or pay fines from taxpayer-collected funds.

I've been concerned watching the explosion of car sales in China that they had not learned from our environmental mistakes, especially our failure over the past 30 years to wean ourselves from the gas guzzlers. Instead we've been in retrograde.

So this is a bit of hopeful news. Now they have to do something about their industrial pollution, deforestation, et. al.