China’s Environmental Conundrum
Shri Narendra Tripathi
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’.[1]
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).[2]
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’[1].
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.[1] 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.[2]
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.