China’s environmental story is full of contradictions. What
does one make of a country where the government severely limits the freedom of
NGOs, yet has some of the most thorough environmental laws and most
sustainably-minded leadership in the world? A place where the opening of a
nature preserve is celebrated with a banquet that includes endangered animals? A
country that builds the most wind turbines—and burns the most coal?
Judith Shapiro’s readable new book, China’s Environmental Challenges, untangles these
contradictions and provides a snapshot of China as it teeters on the edge of unprecedented
ecological limits. Shapiro was one of the few Americans to enter China before relations
between the two countries were normalized in 1978 and now teaches global
environmental politics at American University. In the book, she looks at how
national identity, government structure and civil society play into China’s
approach to environmental issues.
By now, we’re familiar with news of polluted cities and
“cancer villages,” enormous factories and contentious dam projects, rapid
desertification and a growing middle class eager to model the West’s worst
consumerist excesses. With news like this, one gets the impression that Chinese
society is a monolithic ogre blindly pulling its people, and the world, toward
environmental ruin.
But according to Shapiro, the country’s domestic realities
and international relations are complex.
She reveals that China’s leadership under Mao Zedong was
just as undeniably brutal to nature as it was to millions of Chinese during the
“Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961): swaths of forests were felled for unusable steel
smelters, sparrows were systematically killed as “pests” despite their
important role in defending crops from insects, and ecologically-sensitive
areas throughout the country were converted to experimental farmland, leading to famine (Shapiro’s
2001 book Mao’s War Against Nature digs
further into this period).
But China’s government has become increasingly more
fractured and sensitive to environmental issues in the last few decades, just
as the stakes have been raised. Echoing Jonathan Watts in When a Billion Chinese Jump, Shapiro writes that it’s not the national
government, but an entrenched network of corrupt and uncontrollable developers
and local officials, that are driving most of the country’s environmental
problems today.
A Factory on the Yangtze River / Wikimedia Commons |
The same rich countries that lament China’s environmental
record are far from blameless either. For decades, the US and Europe have
displaced environmental harms to China, especially in the textile and
electronics industries. Now China, with its rising economic prowess and
disgruntled, savvy middle class, is exporting harms itself: to poorer areas
domestically, and to Southeast Asia and Africa.
Though they’re hampered by repressive rules about activism
and fundraising, Shapiro describes China’s community of environmental groups as
large, active and, for the most part, respected. She delves into the contours
of this community in what turns out to be the most encouraging part of the
book.
Chinese NGOs have attended the last few UN climate
negotiations to pressure their government and the global community to take
bolder action on climate change. Famous journalists-turned-activists like Liu
Jianqiang and the 2012 Goldman Prize winner Ma Jun are well-known for their
publicizing environmental harms and challenging corporations and government
projects.
Low estimates put the number of environmental protests at
5000 each year, many of them originating from the same middle class that fuels
the country’s resource consumption. While the difference between human rights
abuses and environmental damage isn’t as distinct as it might be in developed
countries, Shapiro says environmental groups enjoy a greater level of freedom
than other types of political organizations.
Protesting a Chemical Plant in Dalian, August 2011 (Getty) |
Any hope of addressing China’s enormous environmental
problems will involve strengthening this mostly feeble civil society sector,
giving voice to the rural and minority populations most affected by
environmental damage, and tapping into China’s home-grown notions of sustainability
found in its religious and cultural traditions. With Western-style consumerism
ascendant and free speech still stifled, the prospect of such a shift happening
is slim, but the seeds of change do exist. One suspects that US leadership on
climate change, which is currently lacking, may also influence China’s actions
on the global stage.
Although Shapiro’s book is aimed at students (each chapter
ends with discussion questions), general readers will find the book helpful
when placing news items like the recent US-China clean technology trade
tensions or friction over embassy smog reporting in context. Those wishing for
more in-depth discussions on particular issues will need to look elsewhere.
It’s impossible to be a globally-minded environmentalist
today without considering the role China plays. Shapiro rightly says that “it
is within China that much of the future of the planet will be decided.”