Sustainability Challenges in China: A Case Study of Beijing

Intercultural Business
Communication

1
Introduction
China is facing many environment related issues in almost each of its industrial cities.
Pollution has become a curse in the cities like Beijing. Government of China has made many
policies and have implemented different types of measures to reduce this problem. Every year
hundreds thousands people in China are killed due to air pollution (Cheng, et al. 2013). Due
to this, sustainability challenges related to life of people have become bigger for China.
Economic growth in the past few decades and over exploitation of resources has been the
major issues for this challenge to become bigger. Along with this there are nearly 1200 new
vehicles is adding on road every day. The situation in the cities like Beijing becomes so
worse that people had to wear mask for living their life. Beijing attracts a large numbers of
companies hence the pollution is estimated to increase further. Since China is developing at
much faster rate hence sustainability is a bigger challenge for the company as more industries
are going to come in these cities. For this a better pollution control plan is required in the
industry.
Country’s background
China is the most population nation in the world. At the same time it is having the second
largest GDP in the world only behind USA. The per capita income of the country is also high.
This country has developed itself in an industrial hub. Companies are attracted here due to
lower production cost, larger market for business, strong financial and technological support
and one of the biggest political powers in the world economy right now (Matus, et al. 2012).
The phase of industrialisation in the last few decades has empowered their economy but at
the same time it has affected the life of the people due to excessive waste generated from the
industries.
Beijing is the world’s third most populous town in the country and it is also the capital of
China. This city has faced one of the worst forms of air pollution. Cola burning factories
contributes to the highest amount of smog in the city. This city is the global power city and is
centre for economy, finance, culture, business, politics, education, language, innovation and
technology, diplomacy and architecture. It is a headquarters for most of China’s largest-
owned companies and houses the largest numbers of Fortune Global 500 firms in the world
(Rohde and Muller, 2015).