Environment and Governance in China

A Beijing Ring Road

Last week in Beijing, I felt the pollution in my lungs every time I stepped outside.  The pedestrians and bicyclists who passed me often wore medical masks.

They aren’t the only ones concerned: on November 16, for example, the China Daily newspaper reported on climate changes that are “inflicting great losses on China’s agricultural production,” including by facilitating the spread of insects, and leading to rising sea levels along China’s coasts (80 millimeters over the last three decades).  China is counting on “green industries” to add 10.58 million Chinese jobs by 2015, and has just shut down 155 coal-fired boilers in two central Beijing districts where pollution prevents some residents from opening their windows for several months each year.

But what I find most interesting is how people’s frustration with the pollution that is accompanying China’s rapid industrial growth is pushing the government to adopt more responsive political mechanisms.  The Communist Party legitimizes its rule through stability and economic growth, and both are threatened if people are protesting the destruction of their crops or drinking water in the streets because they don’t think their political leaders will listen to their spoken complaints.  (For more on this idea, I recommend Susan L. Shirk’s China: Fragile Superpower.)

That’s the reason I give for the fact that the central government’s environmental protection campaigns are no longer going to judge themselves solely on whether they are meeting government-set targets.  From now on, they are also going to take public opinion into account, if a new proposal from the Ministry of Environmental Protection takes effect.

Smokestacks in the Chinese countryside

It turns out, however, that the Chinese government isn’t the only entity which Chinese citizens are pushing to be more responsive.  American enterprises are on that list as well.  Apple happens to be near the top, because it has consistently ducked local questions about the heavy metal sludge, toxic gases, and other pollutants released by its suppliers.  Local organizations, however, think change is possible.  This month Apple finally met with delegates from five Chinese organizations that have released a report on its supply chain.  “We appreciate the large step Apple took away from dodging its duty and toward attaching importance to this issue,” Feng Yongfeng, the Beijing-based founder of one of the organizations, is quoted as saying.  Said the executive director of another of the groups: “[W]e hope the company will play a role in world leadership and assume its social responsibilities.”

Those are the types of words we’re used to hearing from Americans.  It seems that as China’s economy (and the threats to it) starts to rival ours, so does its people’s expectations.

A stone in the gardens of the Wild Goose Pagoda, Xian