Keeping Skies Blue in Beijing
Chinese palace. ©iStockphoto.com/sming
China’s economic miracle is turning the country into one of the leading polluters and greenhouse- gas emitters in the world, casting a shadow on the future sustainability of its growth. As Pan Yue, vice minister of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration, warned in 2005, “the miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace”. Chinese coal consumption – already exceeding that of the United States, Japan and the UK combined – is increasingly used to feed China’s growing industries and sprawling cities, while already over- cultivated and degraded farm land is being further reduced to make room for new industrial development. And with water shortages approaching emergency levels, it is evident why international attention during Copenhagen was largely directed at China. However, a green public sphere is now emerging within the country itself. After a major success in 2004, when the government was prompted to halt a massive hydropower project, Chinese environmental organisations and activists may offer the best hope for future sustainability.
It won’t be a surprise to many that environmental activism is more tightly regulated in China than it is in countries like the UK – or that activists are keen to get around this. Chinese legislation on social organizations from 1998 represents an attempt by the State to incorporate such organizations within Party structures. A social space is thus artificially created where organizations can convey people’s interests to policy makers and provide fundamental welfare services. However, as Harvard Professor Tony Saich argues, “while the state appears to exert extensive formal control, its capacity to realize this control is increasingly limited”, as organizations are developing strategies to “circumvent or deflect state intrusion”.
Different types of social organizations are currently operating in China, occupying different positions in the continuum between state domination and societal autonomy. There are registered Government-NGOs (GONGOs) and grassroots organizations, non-profit organizations that work under a business license, and unregistered groups. While the process of registration is complicated, hiding a non-profit organization under a business license or working with no license at all implies the risk of shutdown.
Lu, the Party member
CEPF (the Chinese Environmental Protection Fund) is a good example of a GONGO. It was founded by Professor Qu Geping in 1992, who donated his $100,000 United Nations Prize for the purpose.
Lu Ying is a graduate student of Sociology at Peking University and a committed Party member. She joined CEPF in 2007 and is enthusiastic about its achievements. “We educate people and school children on environmental protection and energy-saving practices. This is the best way for obtaining concrete results in the long term.” Speaking to me in her brightly-lit office in central Beijing, she explains that CEPF is funded by multinational companies and is a special consultant of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). I ask her about the relationship between CEPF and the government, and her answer hints at the underlying purpose of the registration process. “Registration is like a fee to pay for our privileges,” she says – in other words, the price of government support. She claims that even though people within the organization may have different opinions on a variety of issues, a consensus is always achieved and no conflict with the government ever arises. The problem, I argue, is that the government is not interested in the environment when economic growth is at stake. Lu, as a good Party member, replies that problems must be solved in a cooperative way, avoiding unproductive and dangerous conflicts.
She concludes her argument by explaining her views on communism to me. “Communism is an ideal state”, she says, “and we aim at achieving this state by educating people on their future. As such, communism is not very different from a religion.” She says she joined the Party to serve the state and that, although there is still a long way to go to reach true communism, “we are learning.”
Unsurprisingly, Lu has a very orthodox view on civil society in China, as a tool that the government uses to bring the country closer to the ideal communist world.
Matthew: grassroots and transnationalism
Hu Xinyu prefers to be called Matthew, and he expresses a different perspective. Matthew used to work for the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre (CHP), a grassroots organization that preserves traditional courtyard houses (hutong) in Beijing. CHP, he tells me, is a registered organization and he stresses that this status is vital to its work: “You cannot do anything in China without registration.”
According to Matthew, the world of Chinese grassroots organizations is growing steadily, but there is a need for professional training and better organization. Matthew is now working for a British NGO, coming into contact with Western-style social organizations. He was sent to Malaysia for a fundraising course, he learnt heritage preservation techniques at an Italian University and received further training in the UK. This kind of international training is common among many NGO workers. But despite his international experience, Matthew would like to spend his life in China and serve his country. Like Lu, he perceives his work as a mission, but keeps himself distant from the government and does not praise communism.
However, Matthew would not call himself an activist: he works in cooperation with government officials (“even though some of them are corrupted, many of them are good”) and tries to avoid conflicts.
Tom, the activist.
Greenpeace China represents a different face of Chinese civil society. The Beijing office of Greenpeace operates as a branch of the Hong Kong headquarters, thereby circumventing bureaucratic problems but giving up any fundraising activity as they lack formal registration. Tom (Chinese name: Wang Xiaojun) joined Greenpeace five years ago. In his previous life he worked as an English teacher, he owned a bar and wrote financial stories for a newspaper. He is just back from Guanxi, where Greenpeace has been studying the effects of reforestation policies on the recent droughts that hit the region. “They only plant eucalyptuses, destroying local biodiversity and compromising the sustainability of water reserves. This may affect the availability of water to local people and farmers.” He’s points out that Greenpeace China produces a lot of similar environmental research. “We provide independent assessments, facts, figures and solutions for local communities, governments and media”.
A good example is “The True Cost of Coal”, in which Greenpeace China draws on 2007 data to analyze the environmental impact of coal. The solution they propose is the internalization of these costs through a taxation programme: this would protect the environment while increasing China’s long term competitiveness.
But according to Tom, change like this won’t come without popular pressure. “People in China are starting to mobilize themselves”, he says. He argues that the role of Greenpeace is to assist them by providing a rational rather than emotional approach to problems. One major example of popular mobilization for an environmental issue was the successful protest in 1997 against the establishment of a large chemical factory in Xiamen, a costal city in Fujian.
Oil refinery with smoke stacks against a blue sky ©iStockphoto.com/ EvansArtsPhotography
The environment has no borders, so areas hit by pollution may not be sources of pollution themselves. This is why, in Tom’s words, “poor people are suffering from environmental disasters more than people in industrial areas.” But finding a solution is not always simple and, despite the transnational involvement of NGOs like Greenpeace, the state still has a role in determining local environmental and development policies. Tom recognizes this and admits that top-down state policies are often the best way for achieving fast results. However, while the central government seems to be aware of environmental problems within China, its ambitious policies are not implemented at a local level. The reason for this paradox is the incentive scheme faced by local officials: since they are mainly evaluated on their area’s economic performance, they tend to put the environment to one side.
Tom comes from Shanxi, the coal mine of China. The house where his parents live is falling down because the mountain it’s built on is riddled with mine tunnels. He shows me pictures of his home province: sheep with coal-dark wool grazing on coal-dark grass in front of a coal processing factory. Growing up in such a context, it was natural for Tom to become interested in the environment.
Environmental awareness is growing in China, both at a state level, in government organizations like CEPF and among the general population. But China’s future success in protecting its environment depends on the strength of the environmentalist position within the government sphere, and on the ability of people, organizations and the media to influence government policies.
Significant change will inevitably take time, but if the often turbulent relationship between the state, environmental associations, local communities and the media can find new spaces for growth, coal mines may no longer threaten the stability of people’s houses – and sheep may even turn white again.
