1. Rural energy flows in China in 1974..

2. Typical Szechwanese biogas digester.

3. China's major coalfields..

4. China's major oilfields_-_

5. World's leading energy-consuming nations.

6. Commercial energy flow pattern for China in 1974_

TABLES

1. Primary productivity of China's major vegetation units.

2. Useful work performed by China's draft animals in 1974..

3. Availability of food energy in China in 1974.

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4. Calculation of food energy requirements for the Chinese population in 1974__

5. Estimates of China's crude oil reserves.

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8. China's consumption of primary energy by sector and source in 1974...

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APPENDIXES

6. Regional distribution of China's energy resources.

7. Sectoral consumption of primary energy in China, 1950-76---

*Vaclav Smil is with the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

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INTRODUCTION

Chinese energetics presents a thoroughly intriguing, highly complex and, in not a few aspects, continuously puzzling case. In absolute terms, the country's fossil fuel and hydropower resources rank withor even above those of the United States and the Soviet Union. Globally, China has risen to the fourth place in primary energy production (following the United States, the Soviet Union, and Saudi Arabia) and to the third place in consumption (behind the two superpowers) and, in the process, has become not only self-sufficient but also a minor fuel exporter. And yet, at the same time, China's energetics is definitely that of a rather poor, developing country where large segments of rural population still depend on plant fuels and animate power and whose per capita modern energy consumption ranks close to the one-hundredth place in the global array of some 175 countries and territories.

The future seems no less ambiguous. While the probabilities for retaining the energy self-sufficiency and expanding the crude oil and coal exports are very high throughout the 1980's, the potential fuel and electricity requirements for the modernization of the Chinese economy are immense and it seems quite improbable that they could be filled satisfactorily with the sole reliance on domestic technology. And even under circumstances favoring a very fast expansion, the country's per capita energy consumption by the year 2000 would equal the levels attained by most of the Western societies already during the first two or three decades of this century.

Although these developments and prospects have recently attracted a good deal of research attention,' their assessment remains a rather difficult and, repeatedly, very frustrating task for any energy analyst familiar with the work and data base available for other major consuming nations.2 The amount of information completely missing in the Chinese case is staggering and much of what is accessible is unpredictably fragmentary and, too often, of dubious quality. What follows, then, is just the best attempt-under rather restrictive circumstances to apply the approaches of general system analysis to the energetics of the world's most populous nation.

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RURAL ENERGY FLOWS

One of the major shortcomings of most national energy studies is, as R. H. Socolow puts it, that "solar energy doesn't count." Attention is focussed on fossil fuels and solar energy other than as hydroelectricity is not included in the analysis. While always regrettable, the omission is not critical for the Western industrialized nations, or for Japan, with their heavy dependence on oil, coal, and natural gas; for developing countries, however, it represents a serious error. Most of

1 Most of this information has been summarized and evaluated in my "China's Energy Achievements, Problems, Prospects" (New York, Praeger Publishers, 1976).

2 To appreciate the wealth of information available on energy in the United States, other OECD nationsand also the U.S.S. R. see, among scores of others, Congressional Research Service, "Project Interdependence: U.S. and World Energy Outlook through 1990" (Washington, D.C., USGPO, 1977), and Workshop on Alternative Energy Strategies, "Energy Demand Studies: Major Consuming Countries" (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1976). Incomparably more material is also available for the largest energy consumers among the developing nations-India, Brazil, and Mexico.

Systematic knowledge is completely lacking in critical areas of energy development and production financing and costs; output allocation and pricing; fuel extraction rates and conversion efficiencies and final sectoral uses.

R. H. Socolow, "Energy Conservation" in J. M. Hollander, M. K. Simmons, and D. O. Wood, eds., "Annual Review of Energy," vol. 2 (Palto Alto, Annual Reviews, 1977), p. 241.

the population in these countries is rural, and until fairly recently it has been either completely separated from, or only marginally involved in, the flows of modern commercial fuels and electricity.

China, with four-fifths of its vast population living in the countryside, is the foremost example of a nation where most of the people are still relying on solar energy to produce, via photosynthesis, not only their food and feed for the animals-but also the necessary fuel and raw materials. For a better appreciation of China's solar energetics I have attempted to quantify all the essential sources, conversions, and uses of energy in the country's rural areas during 1 year: 5 they are systematically discussed below, their derivations are presented in detail in appendix B, and a simplified flow graph is shown in figure 1.

The selected year, mainly because of a relative abundance of available data at the time of researching this complex topic, is 1974, the 25th year of the PRC's existence.

FIGURE 1.-Rural energy flows in China in 1974. All figures, except those for nitrogen fertilizers, are in trillions (10) kcal. Derivation of all flows is

discussed in app. B.

URBAN

LABOR

Insolation and Phytomass Production

Average annual solar radiation with cloudless sky would range between 160 kcal per cm2 in the northernmost Heilungkiang to 235 kcal per cm2 in Hainan and China would receive approximately 20 x 1018 kcal of energy each year. Actual duration of sunshine is strongly reduced by frequent heavy cloudiness accompanying summer cyclonic flows over much of the eastern half of the country and intensity of insolation is appreciably attenuated during late winter and spring months by large quantities of sand and dust swept up from the arid northern regions by continental anticyclonic winds. Solar energy received at the surface is thus only between 100 and 140 kcal per cm2 per year for most of China, and the annual total does not exceed 11.5X1018 kcal.

More than half of this radiation is either reflected or absorbed and reradiated by barren or only sparsely vegetated surfaces: Mountain and plateau tundra, stone and sand deserts, and low-productivity shortgrass steppes cover about 56 percent of China's territory-mostly in Sinkiang, Tibet, Tsinghai, Kansu, and Inner Mongolia-and their combined net primary production is less than 4×1015 kcal of plant mass annually. Tibetan plateau meadows and temperate grasslands of the North and the Northwest occupy 20 percent of the total area and produce each year about 4X1015 kcal of phytomass. Forests, concentrated above all in Heilungkiang and in the South and the Southwest, account for only less than 12 percent of the land, and their total productivity-just over 4X1015 kcal-is actually smaller than that of the grasslands (table 1).

TABLE 1.-PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY OF CHINA'S MAJOR VEGETATION UNITS

While the above plant productivity figures are merely approximation of the proper order of magnitude, net energy conversion of agricultural crops, which cover nearly 11.5 percent of China's land, can be established more reliably by accounting for all principal harvested plants and then increasing these totals by appropriate amounts of byproducts and unharvested roots. In 1974, China's harvest reached

A.

• Abbreviations of all units used in the text, notes, and appendices to this paper are explained in appendix

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