The Up-and-Comer

If China fulfills expectations in the coming decades by emerging as the world's dominant industrial power, its explosive growth could heat the planet to catastrophic levels. China currently has only 20 million cars on the road -- but at its current pace, that number will surpass 300 million by 2030. That's why Zhao Hang, director of the China Automotive and Technology Research Center, has fought so hard to implement what one U.S. analyst calls "the most important energy policy adopted by any country in the world in the last thirty years."

Working with advisers in California, Michigan and Japan, Zhao devised fuel-economy standards for China that are twenty percent tougher than those in the United States. He then steered the measure through the central government, where it was approved unanimously. The new standards, which went into effect this summer, will reduce climate-warming emissions in a country that is already home to sixteen of the world's twenty most polluted cities. They will also save more than 1 billion barrels of oil by 2030 and force automakers to clean up their act: By 2008, ninety percent of the SUVs currently built in America will no longer be legal for sale in China.

China has also implemented a landmark law requiring the country's utilities to produce ten percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. "China understands that climate change is a very big challenge in human history," says Zhao, 43, speaking in his native Mandarin. "It is a matter in our own interest to ensure that our growth is sustainable -- and to impose limits on our contribution to this problem."

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