ABSTRACT
Nearly four decades after the launching of economic modernization and reform, China now faces severe environmental problems. Some rivers are unable to sustain any form of life, and smog has become a common phenomenon in most large cities. In February 2015 an investigative documentary devoted to the issue of air pollution and smog, Under the Dome, went viral on the Chinese Internet and social media before the government decided to ban it after a week (Chai 2015). Moreover, a global dimension to China’s environmental degradation has become increasingly evident, and it raises new challenges for policy-making. It is not just China itself that bears the high environmental cost of being the world’s largest manufacturer, trader and fossil-fuel consumer; there are also significant planetary ecological consequences of China’s rise. Judging by China’s domestic record of pollution control, international observers have raised serious concerns about the environmental impact of Chinese investment overseas, particularly in the sectors of natural resource extraction and basic infrastructure building (Hensengerth 2013; Urban and Nordensvard 2014; Economy and Levi 2014; Fearnside and Figueiredo 2015). Such concerns can only grow, as President Xi Jinping has launched a new series of large-scale international development cooperation initiatives, such as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (together termed the One Belt, One Road initiative).
