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Studies on China's Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Richard Louis Edmonds
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Extract

The contributions to this Special Issue were first presented as discussion papers for a conference entitled “The Chinese Environment” convened by The China Quarterly and held in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies in January 1998. The papers benefited from the input of discussants and guests: Elisabeth Croll, Christopher Howe, and David Norse, and Fran Monks who served as rapporteur. James E. Nickum later wrote a general article on water issues which has enhanced and complemented the conference set. These combined efforts produced a volume which measures the state of the environment and pinpoints the environmental problems that China will face in the first decade of the 21st century.

Type
China's Environment
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 156 , December 1998 , pp. 725 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1998

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References

1. Quoted in “Japan: China's largest donor,” China Environmental Review, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1998), p. 11.Google Scholar

2. I have noted elsewhere (Edmonds, R. L., Patterns of China's Lost Harmony (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 228–230) that water pollution was China's first environmental focus due to clear public health concerns and water shortage problems on the North China Plain. This is essentially part of the economic argument. Yet one must remember that water was seen as a crucial agricultural life-giving component in traditional Chinese culture and, with a government which was very seriously concerned with feeding its population in the early years of the People's Republic, agricultural values must have helped put water pollution high on the early pollution agenda in China.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. One example of this stereotyping can be seen in Ching, Frank, “China's attitude to the rest,” Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 161, No. 28 (1998), p. 32.Google Scholar

4. Murphey, Rhoads, “Man and nature in China,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 1 (1967), p. 319.Google Scholar

5. Wong, Koon-Kwai and Chan, Hon S., “The environmental awareness of environmental protection bureaucrats in the People's Republic of China,” The Environmentalist, No. 16 (1996), p. 215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Wong, Koon-Kwai and Chan, Hon S., “The environmental awareness,” p. 215. For more on the Guangzhou case see Chan, Hon S.Google Scholar and Wong, Kenneth K. K., “Environmental attitudes and concerns of the environmental protection bureaucrats in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China: implications for environmental policy implementation,” International Journal of Public Administration, Vol 17, No. 8 (1994), pp. 1523–1554.Google Scholar

7. Wong, Koon-Kwai and Chan, Hon S., “The environmental awareness,” p. 218.Google Scholar

8. This view was described by O'Riordan, Tim, Environmentalism (London: Psion, 1981), pp. 376–77, as “technocentrism.”Google Scholar

9. A counter-green attitude in China has been growing, especially in the last couple of years, but this remains largely outside popular culture and the power structure.Google Scholar

10. In a similar vein, French President Jospin's visit to China in the summer of 1998 also led to a string of environmentally-related accords.Google Scholar