Green Politics in China

Front matter

RELATIONS

GREEN ~ POLITICS IN CHINH s

Joy Y Zhang and Michael Barr

Contents

List of abbreviations Acknowledgements

Introduction Stepping into Muddy Water Shades of Green: Balancing Development and Social

Stability ‘Sustainable Development’ with Chinese Characteristics Revolution from Within: Changing State—-Society Relations

Introduction

‘Hollywood got it all wrong,’ said Chen Qi, a hydraulic engineer from Shenzhen. He was referring to the movie 2012, in which humans face extinction because of a series of natural disasters. In Chen’s view, the film’s biggest mistake was to build Noah’s Ark on the Tibetan plateau. “The movie assumed Tibet as the last safe place on Earth, but in the face of climate change, the “roof of the world” will actually be among the first to be affected!’ Chen had a stack of empirical data to back up his argument. These data were collected not through his formal job as engineer but as a volunteer for Green River, a Sichuan-based environmental non-governmental organisation (ENGO). The data set consisted of records from local metrology offices and independent water sampling tests from 2003 in the Tuotuo river area on the Tibetan Plateau. It is a region of vital importance for environmental security since the plateau serves as the source of the Yangtze River, whose waters help enable China to account for 35 per cent of the world’s rice production.

In fact, Chen and his fellow Green River volunteers also brought these data to the 17th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP17) held in Durban. An observer organisation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2009, Green River is known for its voluminous data collection and analysis. During COP17, Green River shared new findings on the impact of climate change, especially the degrading water quality at the source of the Yangtze (Green River, 2012). But Chen and his friends did not present their work in technical statistics or intricate graphs. They framed the data within the narrative of the ‘silent sheep’ — meaning the sheep that were unable to speak for their physical pain caused by polluted water and malnourishment. Green River’s study found that while there had been little variation in annual precipitation rates in this area, the form of precipitation had notably shifted from snow to rain, with an increased occurrence of torrential rain. Chen’s hypothesis was that the change in weather patterns might have washed a higher amount of Tibet’s mineralrich surface soil into the nearby rivers. The high mineral content of the water may have caused the sheep to be ill as the local farmers, affected by severe stomach ailments, had long opted for an alternative water source for their own consumption.

When we interviewed Chen in early 2012, he was hoping further research would verify his tentative explanation. As a hydraulic engineer, he was meticulous in giving valid and reliable scientific conclusions. However, he was also keen to not lose time in publicising his initial hypothesis and data on degrading water quality in the source region of the Yangtze River. ‘It is not simply about a gradual change of water quality at a sparsely populated area, explained Chen, ‘but it is pollution of the source of a river that runs through China, serving as the key water supply to approximately one third of China’s population! For Chen, there were two types of environment challenges:

Most people are familiar with the rhetoric of catastrophic ‘what if? scenarios in well-known cities: Shanghai immersed in water or Beijing buried in sand storms etc. The incalculable economic loss alone would be a reason for action. But I feel sometimes we are blinded from environmental challenges that are not in the spotlight but may have more profound and much wider implications for Chinese society.

Chen and his ENGO friends were concerned about obvious ‘headline concerns’, but they were more worried about those less visible and perhaps more significant environmental impacts that plague Chinese people on a daily basis — such as the potential harms which have quietly slipped into China’s soil from changing patterns of precipitation.

We use Chen’s experience as an introduction because this book holds a similar ambition to his environmental work. We hope to shed light on significant but less talked-about issues in Chinese environmental politics. For most people living in China, environmental consequences are not ‘what if’? mind exercises, but are everyday confrontations in the food they eat, the water they bathe in, the air they breathe, and the lifestyle they choose. Thus, apart from Chinese government policies and pledges, this book aims to make visible how the struggle for environmental rights has entered the life of ordinary Chinese citizens. As a consequence of this, we show how green politics in China has led to a pluralisation of political participation, and in some cases, has revolutionised China’s civil sphere. To be sure, none of the efforts from civil society are

(yet) comparable to the leverage the government has in directing environmental actions. However, it is increasingly clear that while Chinese politicians hold unrivalled power, their capacity to control and steer the greening of China is increasingly being challenged and open to negotiation. In other words, this book aims to bring to the foreground what has largely been in the background.

Stepping into Muddy Water

There are three themes of primary interest to this book. They are also, to varying degrees, themes that are exhibited in our example of Chen Qi. First, we are concerned with the geography of ‘imagined communities’ in China (Anderson, 1983). We argue that how connections between actors are conceived and perceived underpins issues of rights and responsibilities in environmental conflicts. The mapping, or the ‘geography’, of social relatedness provides essential insights to the rationales of green agendas. While NIMBYism (‘not in my backyard’), or localised opposition to a particular environmental concern, is a common incentive for public participation, the conceptual premises of what constitutes a ‘backyard’ and its recognised stakeholders may take on a fluid and open-ended nature (Johnson, 2010; Feng, 2010). For example, it may seem puzzling why Chen, a regular consultant for urban planning projects in the southeastern city Shenzhen, became a volunteer of a mid-west ENGO, committing two months every year to understanding the underdeveloped far west of China, 3,800 kilometres away. But it made sense to Chen as he considered the Yangtze source region as the ‘backyard’ to the well-being of people on the east coast. In addition, the tension surrounding the distribution of environmental responsibilities between the Yangtze delta and the upstream Tibetan plateau can be seen as a larger-scale replica of the situation within the Pearl River delta, where Chen’s home in Shenzhen is situated.

To be sure, global communication and the ease of international travel have made the world small. But it is only the interrelatedness between one’s fate and that of the domestic and global Other that shrinks political distance and reconfigures the contours of domination. Thus while this book is about ‘China’, it does not presuppose a national/international or China versus the world binary. Rather, we seek to explore the social imagination of communities present in Chinese green initiatives.

The second theme addresses the entangled social webs which enable environment action in China. Doing research on Chinese grassroots politics is almost like stepping into muddy water. Even basic questions, such as how many non-government organisations (NGOs) exist in China, or whether or not the country even has ‘true’ NGOs, lack clear answers and are enthusiastically debated (Frolic, 1997; Knup, 1997; Ma, 2002, 2005; Schwartz, 2004; Tang and Zhan, 2008). However this book argues that the search for ‘purity’ may be misleading, as reality is always messy. There is rarely a singular or linear relationship amongst the movers and the shakers of social development. Thus, this book recognises the complexity of social influence and acknowledges that social actors often have multiple identities.

For example, in Chen’s case, apart from being a hydraulic engineer and a green activist, he is also a local committee member of the Jiusan Society, one of the eight legally recognised political parties in China. The goal of Chen’s work is not simply to contribute his professional knowledge to ENGOs or to take his findings to COP17 in Durban. His efforts also underlie his annual policy proposals to the Shenzhen government as a Jiusan committee member. Chen told us that on at least one occasion his environmental proposals have prompted an official response from the mayor of Shenzhen. But in addition to this, he was also keen on disseminating NGO findings to his colleagues in engineering, who were a receptive audience. Thus, Chen is at the nexus of at least three important communities to green politics: NGOs, scientific professionals and politicians. While this may not be unique, the implications of these overlapping roles are not often explored.

Third, this book identifies a series of innovative mobilisation strategies employed by Chinese stakeholders, especially those at the grassroots. At one level, this means better communicative skills and narrative building, such as how Chen packaged his concerns in a story of ‘silent sheep’ rather than displaying endless scientific figures. But more importantly, as is demonstrated in later chapters, Chinese environmentalists are keen to develop new ways to engage with diverse audiences, mobilise social resources, and compete for political influence. In this sense, green civil society in China is helping to make the rules, rather than merely follow them (Mertha, 2010).

Shades of Green: Balancing Development and Social Stability

China’s unprecedented economic growth comes with a heavy environmental cost. According to 2012 government statistics, around 40 per cent of China’s fresh water resources still pose a health risk to the public (MEP, 2012). A 2007 report by the World Bank and China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (later known as the Ministry of Environmental Protection, MEP) estimated that the damages associated with air pollution alone amounted to 3.8 per cent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) (World Bank and SEPA, 2007). And as is well known, air travels. Many have expressed concerns about the potential harms of ‘living downwind of China’ (Zhang et al., 2010: 1111-13). Such expressions do little for China’s international image. The list could go on. The outflow of pollution from industrial to rural regions, for example, has threatened China’s food security and put at risk its exports to the West. Indeed, China’s impact on the global environment is well established. Over the past decade, China’s carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 150 per cent (Olivier, Janssens-Maenhout and Peters, 2012: 11). While it has relatively low per capita emissions in absolute terms, China is the world’s biggest energy consumer and the world largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 29 per cent of total global carbon emissions (Swartz and Oster, 2010; Olivier et al., 2012: 6).

In both media and academic discussions, optimism and scepticism, acclaim and blame seem to coexist regarding China’s potential in global environmental mitigation. China is portrayed simultaneously as a reckless polluter and as an emerging leader. On the one hand, there exist many optimists who draw attention to China’s commitment to environmental technology. In the eyes of this group (including many innovators and investors), China ‘gets it’ in a way that many Western nations still do not. That is, China is aggressively tying its future energy security to ambitious environmental projects. Already a world leader in wind turbine and solar panel production (Bradsher, 2010), China is seen as leading ‘by action, as opposed to seeking binding commitments at international conferences’ (China Green Initiative, 2011:12, 46). A second, more pessimistic, school of thought reminds us that China is still effectively an authoritarian one-party state. Many in this camp doubt the sustainability and fairness of government-supported projects, as well as the actual social impact of these showcase initiatives. For example, some suspect that China is not committed to ‘green tech’ per se, but that its so-called climate initiatives are primarily economically driven. Development will always trump environmental protection, the sceptics argue (Lo, 2010).

To make sense of the mixed, sometimes contradictory, views on China’s role in global environment politics, it is necessary to understand the internal transformations that the green movement has brought within China, and how the notion of ‘going green’ is employed by Chinese stakeholders in pushing the boundaries of political participation. We begin by exploring the broader context to China’s green movement, which can be described as a juggling act between development and social stability.

‘Sustainable Development’ with Chinese Characteristics

‘Tian-ren heyi’, the unity of human and nature, is a key concept in Chinese traditional philosophy. It was also an idea frequently mentioned by the various Chinese stakeholders we talked to. A common refrain went like this: ‘Yes, it’s true that modern industrialisation is anthropocentric and Nature is alienated as a means to serve human purpose. But we should also remember that a compassionate and respectful attitude towards nature is an idea that has been embedded in Chinese traditional thinking since 700 BC.’ The point in bringing up this ancient wisdom was to attest that although China’s environment was in a dire situation, there was reason for optimism. The ‘main direction’ (da fangxiang) in Chinese consciousness was to transcend a narrow focus on economic gains in favour of a harmony between humans and nature.

However, looking at China’s development trajectory, this commonly expressed view sounds more nostalgic than convincing. The environment is not a recent topic in China. A well-known policy, often cited within China, is the move in the 1970s to recycle the ‘three industrial wastes’ (sanfei: that is, waste water, waste gas and waste residue), with the aim of improving economic efficiency (L.H. Zhang, 2011). Even prior to this, in the 1950s, at the very beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic, the environment was already an important issue for Chinese policy makers. Yet policies often contradicted one another. For example, Mao Zedong launched a large-scale, governmentdirected afforestation project, which has been renewed by every generation of Chinese leaders to the present day (Yang, 2011). Yet one consequence of the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was widespread deforestation, as trees were cut to help fuel the ‘backyard furnaces’ that Mao hoped would propel China ahead of the West in industrial production. In Mao’s view, it was desirable to bend the physical world to human will. Many of his policies reflect this urge. The ‘Four Pests Campaign’ for example aimed to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows, but had the effect of upsetting the ecological balance and enabled the proliferation of crop-eating insects (Shapiro, 2001).

China’s green initiatives, whatever their effects, cannot be taken at face value. The master plan of economic development has been clear from the beginning. Industrial waste management was initially targeted for better economic efficiency and expansion of resources (L.H. Zhang, 2011). The aim of China’s environment governance was thus ‘to slow down environmental deterioration but, not to stop it’ (Tang and Zhan, 2008: 430). Meanwhile, afforestation was seen not as a primarily ecological concern, but rather as an economic one (Jiang, 2007; L.P. Wang, 2007; Feng, 2008). The masses were encouraged to turn ‘wild land’ into rubber plantations or plant fastgrowing timber. From many of China’s highways, you can see these trees standing in uniformity like People’s Liberation Army soldiers. This is because, for cultural and aesthetic reasons, these forests are nearly always single-species. Pinaceae trees in particular are the preferred choice in many parts of China because they remain green all year round and have cultural implications of long life and good luck. Yet monocultured woodlands lack diversity and are ecologically more vulnerable to pathogens and insects. So although China now has the world’s largest forest planted by humans, covering 53 million hectares, such a triumph has been achieved through clearing wild (that is more diverse) forests in favour of aesthetically pleasing monospecies (Liu, 2009). In other words, afforestation has led to de facto deforestation.

This perverse pragmatism continues today. The Chinese government is criticised for seeing climate change policy ‘not as a cross-sectoral environmental issue, but largely an economic one’ (Yang, 2009: 1013). For example, China is currently the world’s leading recipient of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) programme (Schroeder, 2009). The CDM is an international market mechanism which allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn emission reduction credits, which can be traded and used by industrialised countries to a meet their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Countries that host CDM projects benefit from technology transfer and from projects which help achieve sustainable development. When CDM was first launched, China ‘showed little enthusiasm’ and had limited participation. This changed as it became clear that in addition to the environmental benefits, hosting CDM projects could also have financial rewards (Shin, 2010; Shen, 2011).

As we discuss in Chapter 5, China’s five-year plans are another good example of the complicated nexus between development and environmental protection. The 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) was commonly described as a ‘turning point’ in which restructuring China’s energy consumption and developing renewable energy were highlighted (Fan, 2006). But the plan also seemed to reconfirm an economic-focus behind China’s green initiatives. One policy analyst at the Climate Policy Initiative at Tsinghua University recounted that China’s decisiveness in revolutionising its energy structure was not so much a result of ‘international pressure on climate change’, but rather ‘self-initiated’. In 2002, for example, China’s energy intensity — units of energy spent per unit of GDP - started to rise dramatically. This coincided with an increasingly uncertain geopolitical context after September 11, 2001. In 2011, China imported roughly 45 per cent of its crude oil supply, most of it sourced from the Middle East, and then transported through the Indian Ocean (IEA, 2012). Thus, as we discuss later, the Chinese government has been incentivised to reform the means of economic development, especially how it (literally) fuels its continued rise.

To be sure, for China, a country in which 29.8 per cent of the population still needs to be lifted above the $2.00 a day poverty line (World Bank, 2009a), development is essential. But the extent of its ecological degradation is now causing many to question the means by which China develops. Increasingly within China, the desire for economic growth and the basic demand for a healthy environment are not seen as mutually exclusive goals. However, these issues pose a concern for the government, which bases its legitimacy on sustained economic growth.

‘Sustainable development’ seems to be an obvious solution to the Chinese dilemma. But in practice, ‘sustainability’ is subject to different interpretations. This is not unique to China, but the need for social and political sustainability is perhaps more acute in China. It is worth remembering that despite 30 years of 11 per cent economic growth, China still suffers from a huge development gap, a situation famously described by economist Hu Angang as ‘one China, four worlds’ (Hu, 2002). Politically, it is also a country that has much less centralised power than is commonly assumed. In fact, China ‘is more like Europe ... a thin political union composed of semiautonomous cities — some with as many inhabitants as a European country’ (Bell, 2012).

The difference between a ‘universal’ definition of sustainability and a Chinese one may provide some insights on China’s perspective. Globally speaking, the idea of ‘sustainable development’ was coined in the 1987 publication Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, from the United Nations World Commission on

Environment and Development (WCED, 1987). This notion directs the world to a seek mode of development that ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Here, sustainability is first and foremost viewed as a temporal attribute to social advancement, with assuring cross-generational equality as the core aim. In Chinese discussions, this concept is given a spatial dimension as well. That is, in addition to the rights of future generations, development is only considered sustainable if ‘it meets the needs of a region or a nation without endangering the ability of people in other regions and nations to meet their own needs’ (Wang, 2002: 327).

China’s definition of sustainable development is in line with its emphasis on ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, the phrase used to signify the view that while every nation has climate-related obligations, some countries have more responsibilities than others given their level of development and their role in creating global warming to begin with. The added weight given to the need for ‘other’ regions to develop reflects not only a concern for the less well-off, but also an apprehension in attending to existing social gaps, both domestic and global. As was rightly pointed out by Peter Ho (2006), going green and embarking on sustainability may not necessarily convey the same target in the Chinese context. In other words, for China, sustainability in economic development is not limited to being ecologically sustainable, but also reflects a search for politically and socially sustainable programmes. Viewed in this way, it may not be surprising to see that ‘sustainable’ development is sometimes seen as equal to ‘do-able’ development.

Another example is the findings of the Green Long March (Lvse Changzheng), a national youth programme which aims to promote sustainable development (www.future.org). Xue Yan, a 22-year-old university graduate, was given the task of surveying 100 enterprises the northwestern city of Lanzhou, one of China’s most polluted urban areas. According to Xue, nine out of ten factories rejected her visit, fearing she was an undercover inspector, or worse, a journalist. But there were some local businesses that opened their doors to her. To Xue’s initial surprise, quite a large number of these welcoming factories were far from being environment-friendly. Xue was shown around the factories and witnessed outdated equipment which created unnecessary pollution. She found that most of the factory managers knew that they were causing serious environmental problems. In fact, they were ‘quite frank about it’ and often had a clear idea of what equipment needed to be replaced and what new technologies ought to be introduced. What was more interesting was the conclusion Xue drew from this study: ‘the factory managers were not really the ones to blame’. According to this young volunteer, there was a more serious problem underlying local pollution:

Of course business should take on their social responsibilities, but they are also pressured to generate revenue and keep up the local employment rate. There are those who welcome going green, but are trapped with no financial or social resources. There are bigger administrative and social issues that need to be dealt with to enable local businesses to afford a choice.

In fact, these ‘guilt-free’ polluters are not uncommon in China. Their stories can be found in newspapers and magazines, and were a key theme in one of China’s first novels with an environmental theme, Director of the Environment Bureau (Li, 2009). Many of these businesses, inefficient as they are, still serve as essential bloodlines for local economies. But as we show in Chapter 3, the pressure for ‘getting rich’ is not unique to small chemical factories or local refineries in the underdeveloped western China. Similar pressures exist in the seemingly high-end factories along the east coast.

To summarise, the concern for economic growth and short-term gains still casts a shadow on China’s green initiatives at the national, local and personal levels. But as Xue’s example demonstrates, it also necessitates a reflection on the relations between society, industry and the state, as well as a reconsideration of the distribution of power and responsibility, the right to have a say and the right to be heard.

Revolution from Within: Changing State—Society Relations

In comparison to the central government, citizen-organised ENGOs in China are a recent phenomenon. They started mainly as nature conservation organisations and watchdogs for local air and water pollution (Schroeder, 2008). The first organisation of this kind was Friends of Nature, founded in 1994. It served as the ‘mother organisation’ in the sense that a number of its early members later set up ENGOs of their own. By the end of 1990s, there was a palpable increase in international NGOs (INGOs) in China, which exerted an important influence on the rise of civil society. In many cases, homegrown NGOs founded during this period were led by individuals who either studied in the West or had ‘simply worked in an INGO before setting up their own organisations’ (Chen, 2010: 508).

As we might expect, ENGOs need to adapt to the political particularities of China. This can be seen from the official interpretation of the term ‘NGO’. As one study pointed out, ‘the Chinese official definition of NGOs does not mention self-governance, a key criteria of Western nongovernmental organisations? (Ma, 2005). But increasingly the Chinese government has recognised the importance of civil organisations in filling the gaps in government services and mitigating social conflicts. Thus, NGOs in China have a strange form, often as government-organised NGOs (GONGOs). As we discuss in Chapter 4, given the high standards for NGO registration, it is common for many organisations to remain unregistered, or as they are sometimes, and misleadingly, described, ‘underground’. Yang Hongming, an environmental sociologist in Beijing summarised the situation as follows:

There are many grassroots ENGO s in China, but few have a legitimate status. Many are in the form of business, and register with the local Administration for Industry and Commerce, instead of the Bureau of Civil Affairs. In theory, all domestic ENGOs are members of the umbrella organisation, the China Environment Protection Foundation. It officially has a few thousand ENGOs, but in fact there may be tens of thousands of unregistered grassroots organizations.

The central government has adopted differentiated strategies towards social organizations in relation to their perceived political antagonism. Beijing takes a very different approach to Falun Gong, for example, than it does to most commercially associated NGOs (Kang and Han, 2008). It maintains its influence over non-state actors through corporatism — that is, a system whereby it establishes itself as the arbitrator of legitimacy by limiting and licensing the number of players with which it must negotiate its policies, essentially co-opting their leadership into policing their own members (Hsu and Hasmath, 2012). To survive, ENGOs must avoid the appearance of threatening the structural status quo. However, the heavy interface between the two groups allows NGOs to play a more significant role in the political process than might otherwise be the case. Many corporatist analyses assume that governments in authoritarian states are able to act uniformly to ensure control over civil society. As we shall see, this is not necessarily true. Given this context, there are two common perceptions of China’s state-society relations regarding environment protection. One stresses the dominant role of the Chinese central government, which is still in control of substantial financial and social resources. The other highlights that ENGOs are ‘hopeful’ advocates, trapped in an authoritarian state.

Although both claims have some truth to them, measuring the power of Chinese ENGOs against the government may be missing the point. For the value of an emerging civil society in China is not to have a new form of authority to replace the existing one. Rather, NGOs serve to help pluralise the political process. To be sure, there are examples when civil efforts have had a clear impact on environmental governance. In 2004, the Nujiang hydropower station was put on hold because of Wang Yongchen’s campaign (Lu, 2007). More recently, protests in Ningbo helped stop plans to expand a petrochemical complex (Waldmeir, Hook and Anderlini, 2012). However, the impact of civil society cannot be measured in immediate policy outcomes. Instead, it must be seen in the wider social-political behaviour organisations cultivate.

It is true that the civic functions of Chinese green NGOs are often dismissed, for they are seen as being limited to low-impact events such as environmental public education campaigns, hosting online chatrooms, or handing out brochures (Yang, 2009; Shin, 2010). However, it is also true that for China, a country in which governmentcontrolled media was once the only real source of information, grassroots attempts to spread environmental knowledge are ‘a big deal’. They could be regarded within China as the first large-scale public engagement with science promoted from the bottom up. NGOs publish not only energy-saving handbooks and translated Western scientific leaflets, but also live online reports on food contamination, work plant pollution, new building construction and waste site dumps. The reports, which are compiled from dispersed sources and sometimes deeply buried government papers, equip local citizens with a first line of defence towards environmental hazards. As many of the case studies in this book suggest, the trend towards public disclosure of environment information and the general defence of the ‘right to know’, are both empowering and daring.

Although Chinese activists clearly acknowledge the government as the dominant actor, this is not necessarily a form of political submission. In line with other research, most activists we interviewed suggested that their stance is best understood as a form of pragmatic realism, for sometimes ‘it is necessary to work from within the nexus of power in order to make a difference’ (Ho, 2001: 917-18, original emphasis). It is useful to bear in mind that for those living in China, problems such as industrial pollution, food security and ecological degradation are often immediate worries that affect their daily well-being. Courting government approval is undeniably a more effective way to solve problems than outright confrontation with the state.

For example, the booming housing market in China has pressured local officials into a slippery slope of compromises to ease environmental standards. In the last few years, the official safety distance of a waste incineration plant to residential buildings has shortened from 200 metres to 70 metres (Feng, 2008). In 2009, a young woman in Beijing sued both the disposal company and the local trash office for air pollution. Her aim was to send a strong message to the authorities rather than seek personal compensation, for which she only asked for 300RMB (£30). The first of its kind, this case attracted much attention among urban property owners. But such activism is not only found among middle-class city dwellers; it can also be found in groups traditionally considered disadvantaged. One such example is Chen Faging, a farmer who is known for exploiting existing legal channels in subjecting irresponsible authorities and factory plants to justice, and for promoting China’s public interest litigation reform.!