BOOK REVIEW China's waters of life are the waters of
death The River Runs Black:
The Environmental Challenge to China's
Future by Elizabeth C
Economy
Reviewed by Macabe Keliher
China has had a long and sordid
history of environmental contravention. From
deforestation in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), to the
terracing of the country's hills in the Ming
(1368-1644), to
misappropriation of funds to control flooding in the
late Qing (1644-1911), China's environmental degradation
has for centuries created catastrophes costly to both
human life and the economy.
Today is no
exception, as Elizabeth Economy, senior fellow and
director of Asian studies at the New York-based Council
on Foreign Relations, shows in The River Runs
Black . If Chinese died by the thousands
and millions in centuries past from floods and starvation,
they do not have an easier time today
despite technological innovation, and often die because of it. In
2002, China boasted six of the world's 10 most polluted
cities, in which more than 300,000 people die annually from
air-pollution-related ailments. More than 75% of China's
rivers contain so much pollution that they cannot
support fish or be tapped for drinking water. And desert
covers some 25% of the country as a result of continued
deforestation and grassland degradation.
"With
one-quarter of the world's population, centuries of
grand-scale campaigns to transform the natural
environment for man's benefit, intensive and unfettered
economic development, and, most recently, its entry into
the global economy, China has laid waste to its
resources," Economy writes.
Historically, China
lacked "any compelling ethos of conservation", according
to Economy, which, as a direct result, has passed into
today's society and continues to lead to environmental
degradation. "Attitudes, institutions, and policies
evolved from traditional folk understandings and
philosophical thought, such as Confucianism, which most
often promoted man's need to use nature for his own
benefit." Thus the only impetus for environmental
reform or pollution control in China today comes from
adverse economic or health impacts.
Unfortunately, both the domestic economy and the
populace's mortality now face a serious crisis. According
to a World Bank report, degradation and pollution cost
the country 8-12% of its annual gross domestic product
(GDP) today, while outbreaks of waterborne disease scar
riverside communities, and pollution has created rising
numbers of birth defects and premature death. Economy
also blames improper disposal of medical waste for the
proliferation of the severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) crisis last year.
It all sounds like a
horrible irrevocable mess. But not all is lost. Economy
points out that the government has moved aggressively
over the past 20 years to build up institutions,
implement laws and create programs for environmental
protection. A National Environmental Protection Agency
was created in the late 1980s; it reports directly to
the State Council and has successfully carried out
reform measures. In 1989 the National People's Congress
laid down an Environmental Protection Law, which has
been used to curb industrial pollution.
Beijing encourages NGOs to take up the
fight China has also allowed, if not tacitly
encouraged, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to
take up the environmental fight. In 1993 the government
welcomed the establishment of the country's first NGO in
the form of an environmental group. Twelve years on,
some 230,000 such organizations exist.
Although
Economy gives brief profiles of some of the leaders and
activists in these organizations, she fails to recount
their successes, instead emphasizing the phenomenon of
their existence. In discussing the Center for Legal
Assistance to Pollution Victims, for example, she
writes, "The center trains lawyers to engage in
enforcing environmental laws, educates judges on
environmental issues, provides free legal advice to
pollution victims through a telephone hotline, and
litigates cases involving environmental law. The
center's resources, however, are stretched thin." Rather
than discussing what the center has accomplished in
spite of sparse finances, or even if it is part of a
larger trend, she talks about its relationship with the
government, making this a story less about environmental
reform and more about politics.
Economy
has wandered
off the message. Instead of telling about how to
reform environmental protection, she emphasizes the need
for political reform or finds excuses to quote activists,
saying things like "if you don't have democracy
you can't have real environmental protection". Perhaps,
but she drops this tantalizing point and veers into
a discussion of the Chinese Communist Party's determination
to hold on to power.
There could be
a larger political problem here. The government and
bureaucracy could be preventing environmental reform and
perpetuating horrible disasters that cause both loss of
life and reduced economic growth. (This was the case in
Late Imperial China, after all.) But Economy does not
make the connection for us, only adding, "Each element
of the bureaucratic apparatus exhibits fundamental
structural weaknesses that undermine the best of
intentions." So it is that the central government
struggles to enforce environmental law because the
environmental agency is understaffed and the provincial
offices rank lower than those whom they are chastising.
Meanwhile, local officials often find it more to their
advantage to allow companies to pollute rather than
close them down, so companies rarely pay their fines and
continue to pollute.
But how will democracy in
China solve such a problem? How have other democracies
dealt with it? Economy does not tell, only reminds us
that in Eastern Europe "environmental groups and
activists were key players in the downfall of communist
regimes". Oh.
What is the message? So
what is she trying to tell us? Is it enough just to be
alert to environmental catastrophe taking place in
China? Or is there a political problem here that must
first be addressed? Or is it the failure of the central
government to rein in the localities?
Part master's thesis, part policy
brief, part collage of newspaper clippings on pollution
problems, the book reads like an undirected and
superficial jaunt through contemporary China and its
ills - economic reforms, repressive government, corrupt
officials, etc - with enough block quotes from other
scholars to bore a dissertation adviser. Economy seems
to have been beset by the problem of not having enough
material from a paper presented at the US
Congressional-Executive Commission on China to write a
book, and thus took to burying the flowers in manure.
She spends whole chapters discussing Chinese
philosophy, or how Eastern Europe has faced
environmental reform, which might add to the discussion
if her message were clear. Instead she passes such
chapters off with transitional phrases such as, "Many
countries face challenges similar to those of China,"
then launches into a patchwork of unoriginal
observations drawn from secondary sources.
And
here is where the problem lies: what is the point of the
book? We have heard most of this before, if not from the
newspapers then from environmental organizations and
activists. If this book is meant as a compilation of
information - as all the reference to secondary sources
indicate - in order to end with policy advice for the US
government on how to "assist in the process of
developing China's approach to the environmental
protection", then she should not hold off until the last
600 words to tell the reader, but rather infuse her
narrative with such a theme.
It is helpful
to have so much information and fact between two covers,
to be sure, but one turns the last page of
this unsatisfying text with the frustration of a poor
Sichuan farmer whose groundwater has been contaminated. Not
only does this book disappoint on so many levels, but it
also leaves one with the bitter feeling that trying to
alter China's march in environmental devastation seems
so futile.
The River Runs Black by
Elizabeth C Economy: Cornell University Press, 2004.
ISBN: 0-8014-4220-6. Price US$29.95. 368 pages.
Macabe Keliher is an independent
historian and journalist, and a regular contributor to
Asia Times Online. His website is www.macabe.net.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
misappropriation of funds to control flooding in the
late Qing (1644-1911), China's environmental degradation
has for centuries created catastrophes costly to both
human life and the economy. 
