China's consumer society surpassing the U.S.

WASHINGTON - For decades, while China was closed to business from the United States, American companies lusted over the boundless merchandise market that such a big country was certain to offer one day.

Now that day has come: China has surpassed the United States in consumption of every basic food, energy and industrial commodity except oil.

The Chinese have overtaken the Americans in refrigerators, watch 1½ times as many television sets and use 1-2/3 as many cell phones. Only in automobiles does China still lag, with barely one-tenth the number of motor vehicles the United States has on its roads.

A report released Wednesday by the environmental advocate Earth Policy Institute said, however, that per capita consumption in China remains far below that of the United States.

China's 1.3 billion people ate 64 million tons of meat in 2004, for instance, compared with 38 million tons consumed by the 297 million people in the United States. That's an annual intake of 108 pounds of meat - mainly pork, with half the world's pigs in China - for every Chinese and 279 pounds of steak, hot dogs and fried chicken for every American.

Fertilizer to grow more food is a measure of more growth to come in China's food consumption. It was double that of the United States in 2004, and both countries cover roughly 3.8 million square miles.

Steel is the commodity that most reflects a modernizing country, and China was using more than twice as much as the United States by 2003. "Steel consumption has climbed to levels not seen in any other country," the report said.

The consumption report said American dominance in automobiles - 226 million to 24 million - is one reason the United States uses three times as much oil as China. Another major fossil fuel product, coal, amounts to two-thirds of China's energy consumption, and its homes and factories burn 40 percent more than those in the United States.

The report was issued on the day the Kyoto Protocol was enacted by 35 industrialized states. The protocol is designed to cut into pollutants caused by fossil fuels, the so-called greenhouse gases.

The protocol has no effect on greenhouse gas production in either country. As negotiated, the protocol considers China a developing country that needs not cut back. The United States withdrew from the protocol four years ago.

To feed its consumption, China imports massive quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, platinum and many other products, which the report said puts its economy "at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well."

Many of those goods come through government-to-government agreements from countries rich in resources, such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia and Australia. Ironically, China keeps its trade balance stable partly by maintaining the largest trade surplus of any country ever with the United States, $162 billion in 2004. That was one-fourth of the overall record $617.7 billion U.S. trade deficit.

On the Net:

Earth Policy Institute: http://www.earth-policy.org/