China will not follow U.S. energy consumption model

Now, it' s off of a Chinese newswire, so like our own propaganda, I would take it with a grain of salt, but there was some encouraging news coming out of China in regards to the future of their energy policies. In a nutshell, they say they are not going to follow the U.S. model, for it would be disastrous:

Xu pointed out that westerners account for only 15 percent of the world's population but used the lion's share of the world's energy to power their industrial processes.

China cannot follow the wasteful western model, said Xu, but would have to invent a cleaner, more effective energy consumption model of its own.

Let's hope that this is actually true. If it is, even the commies are ahead of Bush on this one.