ABSTRACT
Environmental pollution is a global issue that most fast-growing economies have to face, relating to many factors such as economic structure, technological level, political systems, governance capacity, and institutional building, as well as public awareness and social participation. China’s economic miracles over the last three decades have imposed enormous pressures upon the country’s already worsened environment and scant resources. Mounting ecological problems such as air pollution, water pollution and shortages, soil contamination, desertification, and loss of biodiversity have caught intensive attention from the Chinese government, domestic public, and international community. By enhancing its capacity for environmental governance, the Chinese authorities have made concrete steps in curbing pollution with environmental conservation tasks being lifted to the highest platform in the political agenda of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC). 1 Nevertheless, a society’s ability to identify and resolve environmental problems is not merely based on the knowledge and resources embedded in its bureaucracy and legal framework. 2 Up to now, China’s environmental protection has been mainly a state-led process, which has been severely restrained by the existing implementation deficit in environmental governance and the inability of the administration to monitor and reduce pollution in this vast nation. The presence of social actors who can act as advocates for the environment and the integration of these nongovernmental forces in processes of planning and policy making can substantially enhance the opportunities for an ongoing environmental transition. 3
Like many other developing nations in the world, China is becoming more urban, with more than half of its population already dwelling in cities of various scales, most of which are being quickly industrialized and ready to absorb even more people from vast rural areas in the next two decades. As a consequence of poor urban planning, the swelling of the residential population at an incredible pace has made many Chinese cities even less habitable where local people suffer from traffic congestion, polluted air, water shortage and contamination, loss of greenery, and land degradation. Most municipal governments, despite their intense endeavors to promote investment, infrastructure, and local economic development, have failed to pay sufficient heed to growing environmental demands from their city dwellers, which in many cases conflict with unitary economic goals. The
experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union shows that growing environmental discontent often serves as a catalyst for broader opposition to communist regimes. An accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986, for example, undermined faith in the Soviet authorities and helped accelerate the breakup of the Soviet Union. In China today, there remain limits to the openness of debates and to the room for societal action on certain environmental issues, but the dividing line between those environmental topics that are and those that are not considered politically sensitive is constantly shifting and contested by societal forces, as well as by voices within the huge and heterogeneous state apparatus itself. 4 Since the beginning of the new century, many Chinese media have been increasingly adventurous in their reporting and quite willing to give space to critical environmental coverage, with the prevalence of the Internet and social media giving rise to new dynamics in this respect as they provide platforms for ongoing exchange and debate between citizens from all parts of China. 5 This chapter, by discussing the political impact of growing environmental consciousness and flourishing environmental activism upon the city-level governance in China, attempts to reveal that although the party-state is still playing a predominant role in the public realm for environmental action, the public outcry for a cleaner and safer urban environment has been able to exert substantial pressure to force the government to be more tactful and transparent on sensitive environmental issues, and on many occasions, to de-emphasize GDP growth in quantitative terms for clean-up purposes in its development strategy.
