In her recent book, Judith Shapiro provides an in-depth analysis of the political, economic, social, and cultural forces that shape China's environmental governance. Shapiro applies key concepts familiar to students of environmental politics such as globalization, governance, national identity, civil society, and environmental justice to shed light on the complex environmental challenges faced by Chinese society. The book presents a comprehensive analysis of China's environmental plight and should be of interest not only to China specialists, but also to those interested in understanding the environmental implications of China's rapid industrialization and the prospects for sustainable economic growth in China.
Shapiro begins by laying out the external and internal drivers of China's environmental challenges, such as globalization, population growth, industrialization, urbanization, climate change, and the rise of the middle class. She then proceeds to examine the institutional and legal framework of China's environmental governance, the cultural and historical contexts that shape China's changing national identity, and the limits to civil society participation in China's environmental policymaking process. This examination is followed by discussions of the important issue of distributive justice associated with displacement of environmental harm and how future generations as well as underprivileged groups within Chinese society may bear disproportionate costs of China's environmental damage. The book concludes by discussing prospects for change and by emphasizing the world's common interests in China's sustainable development.
Shaprio identifies the globalization of production as one of the drivers of environmental change in China. Applying the “commodity chain analysis” to China's wood product exports, she shows how China's weak regulatory capacity impedes efforts to trace and verify the timber harvesting practices of the suppliers to Chinese manufacturers of intermediate wood products. While discussions of China's position in the global “chain of custody” shed light on an important aspect of China's role in global efforts to protect the environment, it would be beneficial if the author could give more attention to how international market integration influences China's domestic environmental politics and policy. For example, existing literature on the linkages between globalization and the environment suggests that the competitive race between local jurisdictions for foreign investment may lead to the so-called “regulatory chill” and exert downward pressure on the environment in the host country. However, it has also been suggested that trade and investment may help to “ratchet up” the environmental standards in a developing country such as China by transmitting more stringent environmental regulatory standards in advanced industrialized countries to Chinese jurisdictions. The book could more directly engage the ongoing debate about the so-called pollution havens and the race-to-the-bottom to provide a more detailed discussion of the various pathways through which globalization may affect China's environmental regulation.
The chapter on the role of the Chinese government in environmental management details the positive steps that Beijing has taken in recent years to promote sustainable development, in addition to emphasizing how Chinese government bureaucracies' overlapping jurisdictions have weakened the central government's ability to effectively implement and enforce environmental rules and regulations. This chapter does a good job describing how China's well-known system of “fragmented authoritarianism,” with both a vertical hierarchy based on functional specialization and a competing horizontal level of authority based on territorial authority relationships as well as bureaucratic overlap and contradiction in the central government apparatus, complicates the central government's ability to implement environmental laws and regulations. However, the book provides only a very brief discussion of the substantial autonomy local governments have gained as a result of the decentralization that has taken place in the reform era and how local officials' profit motives may have undermined environmental policy implementation. As policy implementation and enforcement at the subnational level present a serious challenge to China's environmental management, a more detailed discussion of the implementation difficulties at the local levels seems to be warranted.
Shapiro's analysis of how China's evolving national identity affects the prospect for sustainable development is intriguing and convincing. In addition to presenting an overview of how traditional Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism approach the issue of sustainability from a human-centered environmental perspective, she makes an interesting link between Chinese sensitivity over “face” to the penchant for grand construction projects and development. In light of the modernization ethos that has come to dominate China's environmental discourse since the Maoist years, this part of the book also raises the important question of whether traditional values of nature can be revitalized to guide China's environmental management.
The chapter on the environmental justices of China's economic development is valuable for highlighting the vulnerabilities of the underprivileged groups in China's search for modernization. My only quibble is that this discussion comes somewhat as an afterthought and does not seem to connect that well with the bulk of the book on the sources of China's environmental problems. In addition, the various chapters only briefly touch upon China's role in global environmental affairs. This is justifiable given that this is a book about China's domestic environmental governance. Nevertheless, it would be beneficial if the book could cull the insights presented in the substantive chapters together to provide a brief analysis of the implications of the findings for China's role in global environmental governance.
Overall, the book covers a broad swath of the factors that impinge on China's environmental performance. While the book does not address the relative weight of each of these factors in influencing China's environmental governance or necessarily generate any new knowledge, it is nevertheless valuable for illuminating the complexities of China's environmental change and the numerous interconnected forces and pressures that drive this process. It additionally raises important questions about displacement of harm and how China might be best able to meet the challenge of sustainable development in the future. Shapiro should be applauded for leveraging her unusual sensitivity to and superb knowledge of China's historical and cultural complexities to generate a fascinating account of the monumental environmental changes currently under way in that country. The discussion questions listed at the end of each chapter should further increase the value of the book as a main textbook for students of environmental politics and contemporary China.
