The Search for Sustainable Legitimacy: Environmental Law and Bureaucracy in China (original) (raw)
Related papers
Environmental governance in China: Interactions between the state and "nonstate actors
Journal of environmental management, 2018
In the West, limited government capacity to solve environmental problems has triggered the rise of a variety of "nonstate actors" to supplement government efforts or provide alternative mechanisms for addressing environmental issues. How does this development - along with our efforts to understand it - map onto environmental governance processes in China? China's efforts to address environmental issues reflect institutionalized governance processes that differ from parallel western processes in ways that have major consequences for domestic environmental governance practices and the governance of China "going abroad." China's governance processes blur the distinction between the state and other actors; the "shadow of the state" is a major factor in all efforts to address environmental issues. The space occupied by nonstate actors in western systems is occupied by shiye danwei ("public service units"), she hui tuanti ("social assoc...
China Information, 2016
For more than two decades, under the imperative of 'developing the country at all costs', local governments in China have allowed developers and industrialists to set up polluting industries which have had deleterious effects on citizens' health and the natural environment. However, China appears to have entered a new phase of determined and concerted efforts on the part of both the authorities and the public to tackle environmental problems. The articles in this special issue of China Information examine the main strengths and weaknesses of China's current system of environmental governance. The central questions linking the case studies reported here are concerned with whether and how environmental policies formulated at the central level are implemented at the local level and how different agents and interests, making use of the available legislative means, influence this implementation process. Engaging a range of political, economic, social and cultural perspectives, the five contributions in this collection concentrate on two broad issues: resolution mechanisms for public participation in environmental governance and the actual enforcement of environmental regulations.
Environmental Governance in China
TEL, 2016
The question of environmental governance has been of significant interest to the scholarly community in general and sinologists in particular. The current literature on environmental governance is researched and studied broadly under four domains, namely, globalization, decentralization, market and individual based governance, and cross-scale governance. In this paper one has tried to look into the question of environmental governance in a socialist market economy like China from the point of view of "decentralization". The word "decentralization" here is to be understood in terms of a) central-local relations and b) state-society relations. The paper discusses some of the critical aspects related to these two facts of environmental governance by referring to existing literature in the field of domestic governance and politics in China. Further, the paper discusses some of the measures undertaken in China to tackle the question of environmental governance. The question of environmental governance is currently undergoing a phase of transition with new forms of "collaborative governance" and new forms of "public private partnerships". However, what one gets to see that an apparently authoritarian China has demonstrated remarkable "political capacity" to constantly reinvent itself and been open to the idea of engaging the other stakeholders in tackling the problem of environmental governance.
China perspectives, 2023
Iza Ding's The Performative State is essential reading for those wanting to learn more about the less visible reality of the daily challenges faced by street-level environmental bureaucrats in China. It lends flesh and blood to a phrase I encountered repeatedly in China in the mid-2010s when interviewing environmental activists: "Well, there is the law, but then there is the application of the law in dealing with pollution cases." Ding's rich and in-depth observations transport readers back to the "airpocalypse" hailstorm and anti-corruption episodes of 2013, when she began her field research in Lakeville, a bustling and developed city on China's central coast. Given the developed context of Lakeville, Ding anticipated that bureaucratic behaviour would be all the more apt to achieve substantive governance, a "governance that is geared towards delivering the fruits of effective rule that people demand and deserve" (p. 7). In fact, it is recognised that authoritarian regimes like China often rely on performance legitimacy (Gilley 2009; Holbig and Gilley 2010; Zhu 2011). If they cannot meet people's demands such as economic growth or a healthy environment, the regime could be undermined by popular dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, Ding didn't find that. What Ding found instead, and this is the book's central claim, is that high levels of "external scrutiny" by the public, coupled with the bureaucracy's low logistical and/or political capacity, led bureaucrats not to deploy substantive governance, but to resort to performative governance, a "deployment of visual, verbal, and gestural symbols of good governance for the audience of citizens" (p. 7). The book illuminates the theatrical side of environmental governance in everyday Chinese politics. The author bases her definition of performativity on Merriam
Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 2018
China has assumed a crucial importance in debates about climate change mitigation. On the one hand, China is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and pollution. On the other, it has invested more in renewable energy than any other country and is making real efforts to address the consequences of rapid industrialisation. There are three key questions for students of comparative political economy that emerge from the Chinese experience: first, what is the relationship between economic development and authoritarian rule? Second, what role has China’s distinct social and political system played in creating and addressing environmental problems? Third, what domestic and international implications does the ‘China model’ have? In short, will China’s authoritarian leaders be able to manage the expectations of its own people and those of the so called international community? This article considers the often paradoxical and contradictory nature of the authoritarian Chinese government’s current environmental policies and suggests that while they may have some success at the domestic level, they may still be an obstacle to international cooperation.
China: An International Journal, 2021
What caused China to decide to protect the environment in the 1970s? Was it a result of domestic political changes or of developments in international environmental politics? While the decision to introduce comprehensive modern environmental policies in China has had arguably a long-term impact on environmental governance, few studies have scrutinised the early decision-making process. This article attempts to address the void in scholarship. Adopting the multiple streams framework, the authors argue that the origins of environmental policy in China arose from the confluence of three streams-problem identification, political tensions and policy choices-under Premier Zhou Enlai's sponsorship. The new ecological perspective arising from the environmental policy emphasises scientific principles and technocratic solutions, lending a contrast to an ideological approach that had characterised the previous decades. This process was accompanied by the new political role of an environmentalist group consisting primarily of bureaucrats and scientists who mobilised international experience to identify appropriate technological solutions. This article analytically traces the historical context, problem identification, policy entrepreneurship and key policy instruments that characterised the first phase of Chinese environmental policies. The authors discuss the extent to which key elements of China's environmental policies today may still be shaped by the technocratic approach in the initial phase.
Environmental Governance under Authoritarian Rule: Singapore and China
2009
This paper considers the possibility of technocratic authoritarian rule to deal more effectively with environmental problems than liberal democracy by comparing Singapore, often regarded as the role model of eco-authoritarianism, with China which wants to follow the city-state's footsteps. However, a closer look at Singapore shows that the city-state's environmental record is only stellar in a utalitarian sense when it is profitable for the city-state. The picture is very different when we consider the near complete destruction of the small country's natural areas. In regard to China, such an approach would, however, be devastating as natural areas have already been reduced to a minimum. In addition, China does not even have effective institutions to deal with the massive environmental crisis the country is facing. Despite massive air and water pollution and heavy investments in new technologies, China has not been able to revert this dire situation. Instead, the reliance on "performance legitimacy" has resulted in an attempt to maintain massive economic growth by among other things increasing the consumption of China's growing middle class. The comparison thus demonstrates that technocratic authoritarianism is not a realistic option to deal with environmental problems.
Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene, 2021
In the last three decades, China’s explosive economic growth has drastically raised the standard of living for most citizens. However, its capitalist turn has also contributed to the global despoliation of natural resources and detrimental environmental harm for its most vulnerable populations. Environmental justice for China’s rural populations is especially important in the context of China’s multi-faceted environmental crises as existing disparities have exacerbated the unequal distribution of economic wealth and environmental harm between rural and urban communities. This chapter examines two environmental intervention programs in China to evaluate environmental justice outcomes under authoritarian environmentalism. The first case study analyzes how the Chinese central government responded to desertification in the Shiyang River watershed in Gansu province by regulating groundwater extraction and promoting agricultural adjustments. The second case study analyzes state response to grassland degradation and ecological migration in the Alxa League of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Our analysis is guided by the following research questions: How have centralized environmental intervention programs addressed northwestern China's environmental and social crises? What are the environmental justice outcomes of top-down implementation of authoritarian environmentalism, and how does the exercise of authoritarian state power shape the equity implications of environmental regulations in China? How might we adapt and modify China’s environmental governance approach to a more just and alternative resource management model in the current era of Anthropocene? Our analysis is guided by a critical environmental justice framework and based on 136 in-depth interviews from farmers, herders, and grassroots cadres as well as government documents, official statistics, and reports from state-owned media in China between 2009 and 2016.