Calculating China's 'Green GDP': Incentivizing Green Development

"An elaborate points system that determines the careers of officials is often blamed for many of China's problems. In their drive to meet targets for economic growth, local mandarins squander money, ride roughshod over citizens and ravish the environment. So now China is trying to devise and embed into its assessment of officials a way of calculating a "green GDP" -- which allows for environmental costs in national accounts—to help mitigate some of these excesses."

...China is littered with extravagant and often useless building projects with no purpose except to impress superiors. One egregious example is a vast $40m airport completed in 1998 in the remote city of Fuyang in Anhui province. It has been closed for several months because it was hardly used. Of China's 660 or so cities, no fewer than 183 have vowed to turn themselves into 'modern international metropolises'. "