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China faces an environmental conundrum which if not dealt dexterously
could unravel its social and political stability. Both Chinese
government and general populace realise that proper management of the
environment is key to China’s growth. The country has to harmonise
economic growth with sound environmental management. As Elizabeth
Economy maintains, ‘the environment will be the arena in which many of
the crucial battles for China’s future will be waged’.
Earlier the Chinese economic growth has cannily
capitalised on the low labour costs and fairly lax environmental
standards. Attracted by the permissive environmental standards many
factories had shifted their location to China, for example, from
neighbouring region of Hong Kong polluting factories shifted to the
China’s southern province of Guangdong. It is to be noted that the
province of Guangdong has been at the fore front of China’s economic
reforms from the 1970s. It had emerged as one of the prominent
manufacturing hubs in the world. However, with the putting in place of
stringent environmental standards as announced on December 2, 2005
around 900 factories will have to close down as they have not yet got
certificates of safe environmental standards. The factories were
expected to get certification by June 30, 2006. In fact the tide has
turned the other way where various estimates point out that the
environmental degradation and pollution decelerate its GDP growth by 8
to 12 per cent. The environmental issue in China is not only of
amorphous environmental regulations, but also of lack of institutional
building geared towards the implementation of rules. This problem is
all the more aggravated by the corruption at the lower
levels.
The unrelenting environmental degradation in China is due
to the attitude of the Chinese governing classes which has stressed on
the economic growth almost to the detriment of the nature. In fact
under Mao the national discourse and ideology was to ‘conquer nature’,
while under Deng Xiaoping the slogan was ‘too be rich is glorious’.
But both had the same attitude towards nature. This attitude continues
till date in fact it has almost magnified due to the retreat of the
state and promotion of market without adequate institutional capacity
to safeguard environment. The continued degradation is giving rise to
protests and riots over the pollution affecting life and occupation of
the people. Chinese communist party has become alarmed of the
increasing environmental protests in the countryside and thereby
eroding its legitimacy. Almost 87,000 protests were recorded in the
year 2005, of which were related to the environmental
issues.
The environmental problems in contemporary China acquire
salience as it feeds on the inherent contradictions between political
reforms and market economy. The market economy as practised in China
has a strong element of crony capitalism. This is best exemplified in
the business interests of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).
Though on July1, 1998 the CCP Political Bureau asked PLA to shelve the
commercial activities, but according to analysts the commercial
interests still persists. It won’t be an exaggeration to assert that
the Chinese economic reforms have evolved without a comparable
development of institutions which are essential to a functioning
market economy. The lack of well defined institutions is reflected in
the Chinese inability to figure out how to deal with the legitimate
grievances of the people asserting their rights for environmental
justice.
For example, the riot police was called to quell the
unrest in the Zhejiang province in April 2005. The people were
protesting over location of chemical factories in their neighbourhood,
which they argued was against the laws as they were located on the
agricultural land. Further these factories were polluting the
environment which was believed by people to causing still-births and
deformed babies. The agitators argued that the local officials have
unlawfully allowed setting up of 13 chemical factories in the year
2001.The people of the Huaxi near city of Dongyang beat up the police
sent to control them. They blocked the road to the industrial park and
successfully resisted the attempts to remove the blockade. Similar
incidents are galore in China. The figures point out 30 per cent per
year rate of increase in the environmental protests. In the year 2005
around 50,000 disputes over environmental protests took place.
Majority of the disputes were related to water contamination (50.6 per
cent). The common slogan in environmental protests is ‘no clean
official, no clean water’. The criticality of the environmental issues
is recognised by the body State Environment Protection Administration
(SEPA) which was set-up to deal with environmental issues. Pan Yue,
deputy director of the SEPA, asserted that, ‘this environmental
problem has become one of the main factors that affect national safety
and social stability’.
The incidents not only raise the questions of environmental justice
but the effective ways to manage them. Coupled with this is the rising
number of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which are working on
environment. The Chinese communist leadership is sceptical, of the
burgeoning population of the NGOs. It apprehends that that the
protests over the pollution might enlarge into a widespread revolt
against the communist rule. The estimates on the NGOs working in China
vary, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs up to year 2002 there
were 230,000 officially registered NGOs. However, the unofficial
estimates put them to be around two million. The Communists party’s
approach towards this expanding civil society is ambivalent at best.
Though initially it has supported establishment of NGOs, but it also
fears that the burgeoning civil society would unleash such social
forces as difficult to control. In a majority of environmental
protests the culpability of the corrupt and unaccountable bureaucracy
has come out in the open. It would be erroneous to believe in the
radicalism of the environmental groups, in fact they have consciously
focused on pointing out the corruption and ineptitude of the local
bureaucracy, and refrained from making a direct link to the central
government. This conservative assertion of the rights is at best a
tactical move for the environmental groups and they see the
inalienability and inevitability of clean environment and democracy.
In fact many senior environmental activists stress on the
inevitability of democracy if not through forceful usurpation of
power, but through imparting environmental
consciousness in the coming generations in which they have been very
successful. A key pointer to the changing political landscape is
mini-revolt in National Peoples Congress in 1992 over the Three Gorges
Dam when one-third of the delegates opposed the dam, and it was only
personal initiative of the Premier Li Peng which saw it through.
The Communist Party elite are very well aware of the
precarious situation they are in, hence they indulge in typical
double-speak. One the one hand they support the activists and media
for bringing out in open the local injustices of the corrupt
officials. But at the governmental level they practise intrusive
auditing of the NGOs, thereby effecting its functioning.
The government believes that many of the NGOs are funded by the West
to make possible ‘heping yanbian’ – peaceful evolution to
democracy. It has been reported that the President Hu Jintao is
apprehensive of the growing civil society organisations and has
authorised a report ‘Fighting People’s War Without Gunsmoke.’ It
enjoins officials to increase control over internet and civil
organisations. Hu Jintao is guided by the occurrences of revolutions
started by the NGOS in countries such as Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Especially the toppling of the Kazakhstan President Askar Akayev, whom
Chinese regarded as their ally, by the people with active involvement
of civil society organisations, has alarmed the Chinese government.
This is now increasingly evident in government’s attempts to enforce
internet censorship. But the attempts to control the environmental
protests will be really difficult for many of them are spontaneous and
directed against local officials. However, the Chinese strategy is to
localise any such environmental protest and fix accountability at the
local level and prevent it from spreading to become a mass movement at
the regional level or national level.
The Communist Party is aware of the environmental dilemmas
they confront and the limited choices they have. With lack of popular
will in formulating policies, the attempts to grapple with the
environmental issues will give rise to a new set of problems. As new
dams and reservoirs are constructed to mitigate the water scarcity,
the displacement of the people will lead to simmering discontent and
fight over resources. The Chinese government will increasingly find it
difficult to manage the simmering discontent, and might have to resort
to repressive methods to control the situation, thereby, putting their
legitimacy to risk. Or the scenario might be where Communist Party is
in control at the national level while the regional or provincial
government is largely free of the central control. Democracy may not
wipe out all the environmental problems of China, but it will be of
great help in dissipating the discontent. Hence, China’s future
trajectory will be determined in large part by how China deals with
the environmental conundrum. |
