In Pingnan County 屏南县, the epicentre of what Legal Daily and the All-China Lawyers’ Association would later name one of 2005's ten most influential lawsuits, the Rongping joint chemical plant (Rongping lianyinghua gongchang, 容屏联营华工厂), was initially welcomed as a source of tax revenue and over 300 new jobs. In 1992, when the factory opened, Pingnan was located in one of the poorest parts of Fujian province, a place where local sayings (“Pingnan, Pingnan is poor and hard”) verged on lamentations. Over the next ten years, however, crops started dying and health problems spread. When petitions and media reports failed to address complaints, 1,721 villagers filed a class action lawsuit against the factory in 2002. Three years and one appeal later, the Fujian Provincial High People's Court ordered Rongping to pay 684,178.2 yuan (US$100,614) in compensation and clean up industrial waste. This translates to roughly 397 yuan per plaintiff (US$58), an ambiguous victory for what many observers saw as a landmark environmental case.Footnote ¹

The Pingnan story intersects familiar themes for those attentive to the news coming out of China in the late 2000s: China's severe environmental problems and overarching turn towards courts and law. Yet despite a surge of research interest in both topics,Footnote ² little apart from newspaper articles has been written about environmental litigation. Stepping behind the headlines, this article traces a civil environmental lawsuitFootnote ³ from dispute to decision to explore how environmental law works (including processes and institutions) as well as how lawyers and litigants try to work the law (including obstacles and strategies). This account of a journey through the courts draws primarily on 14 months of fieldwork from November 2006 to January 2008 and over 130 interviews with Chinese plaintiffs, lawyers, judges and others familiar with environmental litigation. The cases recounted below are not meant to be representative, but rather illustrative of the problems encountered and solutions attempted.

Of course, there are many ways to resolve disputes without recourse to courts. In focusing on how litigation works, the point is not that lawsuits are the most common – or even the best – way to address environmental problems. The vast majority of environmental disputes are handled through government-brokered deals, private concessions or simply when plaintiffs give up and go away.Footnote ⁴ But such disputes are rising. There were 616,122 environmental complaints nationwide in 2006, a 60 per cent increase over 2001,Footnote ⁵ and the Vice-Minister of Justice commented in 2007 that “mass cases coming from conflicts over … environmental policies are growing by the day.”Footnote ⁶ And while the government does not release annual statistics on civil environmental lawsuits, a 2008 Xinhua news article reported 4,453 pollution compensation cases in 2004, followed by 1,545 cases in 2005 and 2,146 in 2006.Footnote ⁷ Although these are not huge numbers, several thousand cases a year demonstrate that litigation is a standard (if relatively infrequent) way to handle environmental disputes.Footnote ⁸

Equally important, low frequency events can illuminate social dynamics as well as high frequency ones. As a growing literature on courts in illiberal states recognizes, litigation in tightly controlled political systems is often not just an extension of state authority, but a hard-fought struggle that makes visible daily conflicts over class, citizenship and power.Footnote ⁹ Focusing on just one process of dispute resolution and one type of dispute brings these tensions into high relief. Rather than reaching for pronouncements about the rule of law writ large, detailing ground-level encounters with courts promoted and carefully watched by political elites reveals a more textured view of legalization. Quotidian chronicles of financial stress, lawyer–client tensions or the hunt for elite allies reveal much about the ways in which the post-Mao push to write new laws, professionalize the judiciary and strengthen the courts has (and has not) trickled down to China's court users.

Getting a Case into Court

In environmental disputes, getting a day in court is more often a hard-won privilege than a basic entitlement. Under the Environmental Protection Law, would-be plaintiffs have three years from when they became aware of pollution-related losses to file a claim, one year longer than the typical statute of limitations for tort cases. Sometimes, as in the Pingnan case, the court counts time spent seeking administrative solutions against the statute of limitations, a real problem when bureaucracies move slowly or fail to act altogether. The right to sue, a legal concept known as standing, is also limited to those who have directly suffered harm.Footnote ¹⁰ Only pollution victims (wuran shouhaizhe 污染受害者), not environmental activists or sympathetic lawyers, can bring a case and even they are not guaranteed a court hearing. Judges at the court's filing division (li'an ting 立案庭), the first stop in bringing a lawsuit, routinely refuse cases. Although case refusal is supposed to be accompanied by a written rationale, judges often skip this step, leaving plaintiffs without the record of refusal necessary to formally appeal the decision. Judges say they turn away cases for a variety of reasons, such as because an administrative solution is under way or because law is not an appropriate way to solve the problem (2007-55).Footnote ¹¹ In practice, of course, these decisions give judges latitude to sidestep volatile disagreements that might affect social stability or annual court evaluations. Day to day, this means the filing division often has the unenviable task of persuading very angry people to seek redress elsewhere. In so doing, judges sometimes exercise individual discretion and sometimes follow orders, such as when ad hoc confidential regulations instruct courts to refuse certain types of cases or handle them in a certain way.Footnote ¹²

The difficulty of manoeuvring cases past the filing division is well knownFootnote ¹³ and, for many would-be plaintiffs, the primary emotion associated with law is frustration. In a futile five-month quest to get an environmental dispute accepted by the courts, one Hunan man took ten trips to the basic level court, three trips to the intermediate court and two trips to the high court. Here is a typical entry from the journal he kept:

The commonness of exclusion leaves some environmental lawyers ready to declare success as soon as a case is accepted (2007-91). After all, without a hearing, “there's no place to even talk” (2007-14).

The filing division also has the discretion to break up collective lawsuits. China is one of the few countries besides the United States to allow lawsuits on behalf of a large group of people with the same grievance. Under the 1991 Civil Procedure Law, citizens can bring collective lawsuits led by two to five representatives, a logical course of action when pollution affects an entire neighbourhood or village.Footnote ¹⁵ Often, however, courts divide collective lawsuits into individual cases in order to maximize per case court fees, boost statistics on the number of cases handled or disarm collective action. But filing paperwork for hundreds (or even dozens) of identical cases is a burden (2007-87; 2007-96; 2007-98). Photocopying documents and lugging around boxes is enough of a deterrent that lawyers say even persuading a court to treat each family as a unit instead of individuals is a minor accomplishment (2007-98).

Many local observers interpret trouble getting on the docket as an outgrowth of local protectionism (difang baohu 地方保护). This is by far the most frequently cited explanation for most litigant difficulties, and refers to the widespread conception that the local government shelters large polluters who prop up the local economy.Footnote ¹⁶ The Pingnan case is a particularly good example of how focusing on economic growth can create a situation where, as one Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) employee put it, “if there wasn't a factory, there wouldn't be a government” (2007-68). By 2003, tax revenues from Rongping chemical plant comprised more than 25 per cent of the county's 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) annual budget.Footnote ¹⁷ While local protectionism is not always a factor, powerful political protectors can certainly sway courts dependent on local government for salaries, benefits, housing and facilities.

Lawyers’ fluency in the language of the law and personal connections make them a natural asset in initially beating back local protectionism by drawing up legal briefs, submitting preliminary evidence and talking a case into the courts.Footnote ¹⁸ The trouble for many complainants lies in finding a lawyer willing to take the case.Footnote ¹⁹ Yet contrary to the common view of poverty-stricken pollution victims, some would-be plaintiffs can scrape together the money for a competitive attorney fee (2007-42). Nongmin 农民, the Chinese administrative designation for anyone involved in agricultural work, covers a range of incomes, including those more akin to farm bosses than farmhands. In 2007, I observed a 90-minute contract negotiation between a group of nongmin and two environmental lawyers which centred on the relative wealth of the villagers (as one lawyer said, “I've seen people much poorer than you!”). The two sides settled on a 60,000 yuan (US$8,823) fee paid in instalments, a decent amount of money considering that a reasonably successful mid-career Beijing lawyer might net about 20,000 yuan per month and that per capita rural income was 4,140 yuan per year in 2007.Footnote ²⁰ While the group may have had hidden sources of income (possibly remittances or past profits from bumper harvests), it is equally likely that they decided that scrimping for a lawyer was worth it.

Still, even when clients can offer a market-rate fee, many lawyers remain wary of environmental cases because of the potential political sensitivity and the amount of legwork involved. Collective lawsuits are particularly troublesome because plaintiffs must individually opt in, which typically means that the legal team must submit a copy of each litigant's identity card (shenfenzheng 身份证) to the court.Footnote ²¹ And even those willing to track down dozens (or hundreds) of identity cards sometimes balk at situations in which the polluter enjoys strong local government support. These lawyers delicately inquire about the extent of local protectionism during preliminary interviews or simply refuse cases where the polluter is a major taxpayer. Physical danger is also a concern (2007-18; 2007-112). One Beijing lawyer, for example, is afraid that the mafia investors behind polluting enterprises will beat him up on investigatory trips to isolated factories (2007-81).

Coaxing a lawyer into taking a case is often easier with law firms registered outside the immediate area.Footnote ²² Neither polluters nor their local government supporters usually have the high-level connections necessary to cause trouble for non-local lawyers (2006-10; 2007-86; 2007-96; 2007-106). Lawyers’ daily conduct and, more importantly, annual licence renewal are overseen by the local justice bureau and it is not easy to orchestrate bureaucratic pressure from far away. As a criminal lawyer in Zhejiang explains it: “Local lawyers won't accept the case, but go to lawyers in other places, maybe more famous, so they will not offend local leaders. I often go to other counties to handle cases.”Footnote ²³ Bringing in famous lawyers, particularly from big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, disposes judges to take complaints more seriously too. In a well-known administrative lawsuit against the Beijing urban planning bureau, for example, plaintiffs credited their success to the national reputation of the lead lawyer.Footnote ²⁴ Sometimes, local and non-local lawyers team up to unite outsiders’ prestige and relative freedom with insiders’ local connections and on-the-ground ability to collect evidence and file paperwork (2007-96).

But signing up plaintiffs and assembling a legal team is no guarantee that either side will see a case through. When harassment picks up, even committed lawyers reconsider their priorities. One Hebei lawyer, for example, dropped an environmental case after the suddenly overzealous local water bureau – probably under pressure from well-connected polluters – intensified inspections at his law firm (2008-2). Disappearing plaintiffs are also common. Several lawyers I interviewed spent a significant time investigating cases and collecting evidence only to find complainants unwilling to sue (2007-34; 2007-71; 2007-106). The fact that collective lawsuits require official representatives makes it particularly easy to identify, cajole and discourage leaders. In a 2002 collective case in Beijing, a construction company offered two representatives 50,000 yuan (US$7,352) each to relocate and drop the lawsuit.Footnote ²⁵ Plaintiffs in other cases report widespread intimidation, such as local officials entering homes, eating food and using the bathroom without invitation.Footnote ²⁶ In addition to bribes and threats, inertia also saps energy during a long lawsuit. Maintaining hope, especially in collective lawsuits, requires both persistence and talented leadership. The Pingnan case was successful in large part because the village unified around the head representative, a middle-aged man named Zhang Changjian 张长建 who ran the local medical clinic. Dubbed the lawsuit's “emotional leader” (jingshen lingxiu 精神领袖) by the press, Zhang told a reporter in 2004 that “I can't move. Right now, everyone is watching me. If I retreat, everyone will disband.”Footnote ²⁷

Front-loaded case acceptance fees (anjian shouli fei 案件受理费) also force even the angriest plaintiffs to calculate the monetary value of court-brokered justice. Although the State Council lowered litigation fees in 2007 to make it easier to bring civil claims, acceptance fees can be high enough to compel consideration. Court fees for cases involving less than 10,000 yuan (US$1,470) in requested compensation are cheap – a flat 50 yuan – but above 10,000 yuan, fees are calculated as a decreasing, sliding percentage of the amount requested. This ranges from 0.5 per cent of requested compensation (over 200 million yuan requested) to 2.5 per cent (between 10,000 and 1 million yuan requested). If losses are significant and litigation fees high, poor plaintiffs’ best recourse is to obtain proof of poverty and petition the court to waive fees or delay payment.Footnote ²⁸ Often, these decisions rely on a judge's assessment as to whether applicants are troublemakers (diaomin 刁民) or the deserving poor. Poor courts reliant on litigation fees are also less likely to approve fee waivers than richer courts with diverse sources of income (2007-55).

In the initial struggle to get a case accepted by the courts, lawyers and litigants also face a strategic decision: where to sue. For civil cases, there are three levels of courts of first instance (basic level courts, intermediate courts and high courts) with one appeal possible. Important cases (zhongda anjian 重大案件), defined in the Civil Procedure Law as those “with a significant impact within the particular jurisdiction,” bypass the basic court and go straight to the intermediate or high court. The definition of an “important case” varies by province, but also often involves a baseline level of compensation. Although it is relatively unusual, starting with the intermediate court and appealing to a higher court if necessary is seen as one way to lessen the obligation that accompanies basic level courts’ budgetary reliance on local government and, by extension, major taxpayers. Higher-level courts are better insulated from local pressure, staffed by better-educated judges and more likely to return favourable decisions (2006-3; 2006-15).Footnote ²⁹ Sometimes, this works. In a 2002 water pollution case in Tangshan 唐山, for instance, the high court admonished the intermediate court for a grave legal error (yanzhong falü cuowu 严重法律错误) and sent the case back on remand.Footnote ³⁰ Yet skipping levels is increasingly difficult. A 2005 Supreme People's Court notice effectively limited most environmental cases to lower courts by mandating that all collective lawsuits start in basic level courts.Footnote ³¹ And on the rare occasions when non-mass cases involve sufficient losses to qualify as “important,” individual plaintiffs may have to lower their requested compensation to afford case acceptance fees.

Another choice is to work horizontally to find a court somewhat insulated from the polluter's political influence. When pollution crosses borders, several different courts are likely to have jurisdiction and filing a case as far away from the source of pollution as possible usually makes sense (2007-99).Footnote ³² In particular, China's maritime courts may be particularly good places to bring water pollution lawsuits (2007-9; 2007-65). Like intellectual property tribunals, maritime courts handle a high number of cases involving foreign companies, and centrally appointed judges have a reputation for being professional and relatively well-educated. In a landmark 2002 case, for example, the Tianjin maritime court held several Hebei paper companies liable even though emissions met national standards. The plaintiffs’ Beijing-based legal team ascribed success to their choice of court, later writing that using maritime courts can “remove the administrative interference that accompanies local protectionism, bring the advantage of specialized courts and expert judges into play, increase the efficiency of the case and guarantee justice.”Footnote ³³ Today, one of the lawyers involved in the case believes that the Tianjin maritime court is the best place to bring water pollution cases in the country.

Inside the Court

Legally, civil environmental cases hinge on two key legal points. First, the Environmental Protection Law and the revised 2009 Tort Liability Law agree that polluters are liable for damages even if discharge meets government standards. Second, the revised 2009 Tort Liability Law, the 2008 Water Pollution Law, the 2004 Solid Waste law and a 2001 Supreme People's Court explanation (jieshi 解释) shift the burden of proof such that defendants are responsible for proving that pollution did not cause losses. This latter point is particularly important for pollution victims looking for compensation. Environmental cases turn on causation and it is notoriously difficult to prove (or deny) a connection between pollution and harm. Still, even strong evidence of causation does not guarantee that plaintiffs will receive the full amount of requested compensation. Judges often split the blame for losses, a legal concept known as shared liability. In a 2004 case in Shandong, for example, two fish farmers only received 51 per cent of their requested compensation on the grounds that they should have sought government help mitigating the effects of an oil spill.Footnote ³⁴

Once inside the court, the first step is to demonstrate that pollution exists. One common form of evidence is amateur photographs and videos of devastated landscapes or toxic-looking runoff. The gold standard, however, is government reports, which are seen as “very authoritative” (feichang quanwei 非常权威) (2007-20) and “comprehensive” (quanmian 全面) (2007-91).Footnote ³⁵ Some lawyers even find major cases easier to litigate because of the increased likelihood of government reports documenting pollution (2007-21). The most obvious source of information is the local EPB, an agency whose competence and objectivity varies. In some places, lawyers find that the EPB efficiently conducts tests on request without demanding fees (2007-57). Elsewhere, however, it is less responsive. When Zhang Changjian started lodging complaints in Pingnan, for example, the closest EPB with pollution monitoring equipment was three hours away, making impromptu inspections nearly impossible.Footnote ³⁶ In places with unco-operative EPBs, court users sometimes learn to work around the agency. One repeat plaintiff in Hebei now requests help from the relatively sympathetic agricultural bureau instead (2007-107).

When they exist, there is also no guarantee that pollution data will be accurate or accessible. In some places, long stretches of county-mandated “enterprise quiet days” (qiye anjing ri 企业安静日) disallow environmental inspections on the grounds that it would interrupt production.Footnote ³⁷ Factories are also adept at hiding pollution even from assiduous inspectors. Tricks include polluting only at night, building secret underground discharge pipes and storing wastewater in pools that flood during rainstorms. And when government agencies do manage to document pollution, the resulting reports are often tightly guarded. Although judges are officially responsible for investigating the unclear aspects of a case, soliciting evidence frequently requires wheedling reports out of bureaucrats with little incentive to co-operate. One conscientious Tianjin judge made three trips to the EPB to obtain pollution data, succeeding only after he went drinking with local officials (2007-74). In the Pingnan case, the plaintiffs’ lawyers could pry documents out of the EPB only when they knew enough to request them by name (2007-15). Yet despite the difficulty of tracking down government data, independent scientific analysis is relatively rare. Outside expertise is expensive and, litigants fear, too easily dismissed as biased (2006-15). In politically sensitive cases, it can also be hard to find labs willing to run tests. In Shanxi, one lawyer was unable to get water samples analysed because environmental monitoring stations denied owning the necessary equipment.Footnote ³⁸

While courts can track the history of pollution through routine government reports, day-to-day environmental monitoring does not typically touch on causation or damages. Across legal systems, pollution-related compensation claims hinge on the tricky business of proving quantifiable economic losses linked to pollution. This is hard because damages, like dead fish, could be caused by other factors besides pollution, like overfeeding or overcrowding. Although the burden of proof rests with the defendant to prove that pollution did not cause damages, local courts routinely rule against plaintiffs because of doubts about causation. Cases involving lots of small enterprises are especially challenging because individual responsibility is so difficult to untangle (2007-87). Small companies are also more likely to be unregistered, so tracking down an owner to sue can be a problem (2007-99). To bypass the morass of causation, one strategy is to rely on a clear-cut standard. A case in Tangshan, Hebei, for example, hinged on whether the factory violated a 1986 regulation requiring a 1,000 metre buffer zone between industry and a residential neighbourhood (2007-21).

In the absence of clear-cut standards, judges typically rely heavily on outside appraisals, usually conducted by either a government bureau or a court-appointed appraisal agency.Footnote ³⁹ Depending on the scope of the appraisal, the resulting report might assess damages, come to a conclusion about causation or both. Judges often lack the time or skills to investigate environmental cases and, in theory, a scientifically informed assessment helps improve the quality and efficiency of decisions. In fact, cases often hang on appraisals, as judicial decisions rarely deviate far from a report the court regards as unbiased. Yet even the most expert appraisals are more akin to a good guess than scientific proof. Many of the effects of pollution, like a tree's stunted growth, are difficult to quantify, especially when there is no consensus on the best way to calculate damages. In the absence of a set standard, court decisions spend long paragraphs discussing, for example, whether dead fish should be valued at the wholesale or retail price.Footnote ⁴⁰

During my fieldwork, observers agreed that appraisals were both essential to the success of a case and of greatly uneven quality (2007-85; 2007-91). The local justice bureau is responsible for licensing both appraisal organizations (jianding jigou 鉴定机构) and individual appraisers, but the qualifications for the job are relatively flexible. For example, appraisers can get a licence with just five years of relevant work experience and a related undergraduate major.Footnote ⁴¹ Clued-in judges know that an appraisal licence does not necessarily indicate competence and deeper evaluation is necessary. After several phone calls, one judge passed up a prestigious Qinghua University-affiliated organization because employees lacked the necessary skills (2007-74). Often, cases move ahead with a less-than-capable organization responsible for the key piece of evidence. In an environmental hearing I observed in Hebei in 2008, the appraisal team did not include a single plant expert even though their primary task was evaluating damage to a fruit orchard. Or, in the Pingnan case, plaintiffs complained that the court-appointed appraiser spent less than a day in the village and only did a brief visual assessment of a small piece of forest located quite far from the factory.Footnote ⁴² Often, lawyers suspect that experts were pressured or bought off rather than merely incompetent. In a case in Inner Mongolia, an appraisal was written and stamped the same day inspections took place and before test results were available.Footnote ⁴³

Despite the fact that hired experts are often seen as biased, litigants sometimes commission their own appraisal, picking an organization based on personal ties, efficiency, technical competence and location (2007-91; 2007-111). Some lawyers say that picking a northern-based appraiser for a case in the south (and vice versa) enhances objectivity (2007-91). One issue with this strategy is that independent experts are expensive. Although the cost of an appraisal depends on the amount of work involved and who is hired to do it, it often falls in the 10,000 to 50,000 yuan (US$1,470–7,352) range, no small amount for plaintiffs typically already suffering economic losses. Nor is documentation necessarily a first impulse after pollution. Dead fish or rotting crops are often cleared away before would-be plaintiffs ever consider litigation (2007-27).

During the actual hearing, lawyers’ best rhetorical opportunity is the closing statement (known in civil cases as the dailici 代理词). Lawyers see this as an opportunity to lay out an argument that flawlessly demonstrates their legal logic and education (2007-91; 2007-97). The clearest sign of success is when court decisions echo lawyers’ legal arguments, as they occasionally do (2007-91). For the more theatrically inclined, closing statements also provide a dramatic chance to appeal to judges’ empathy, ego and patriotism. Playing on the government's historical sympathy for economic distress, lawyers often cast their clients as members of a weak and disadvantaged group (ruoshi qunti 弱势群体).Footnote ⁴⁴ For example, a Beijing lawyer opened a 2003 closing statement:

When it arises, environmentalism is primarily couched as “rightful resistance” and framed “in reference to protections implied by ideologies or conferred by policymakers.”Footnote ⁴⁶ One lawyer sees environmental slogans as “points of support” (zhichengdian 支承点) to buttress statements like “how can a harmonious society exist when everything is polluted?” (2007-106). Others neatly interweave environmentalism and patriotism, as in this excerpt from the closing statement in the Pingnan case:

After reminding the judges of his status (“I am a Beijing lawyer and university professor”), the lawyer evokes Chinese pride in support of environmental rights. Reasonable Chinese people, he implies, should protect the homeland from destruction.

In these final remarks, lawyers sometimes urge judges to uphold justice and even make history. One lawyer defending an environmental protester told the court that “those who should be judged are neither the defendants whose human rights and property rights were violated nor those weak and disadvantaged groups living at the bottom rungs of society, but those at the chemical companies responsible for [this] … pollution accident! … They will stand accused by history.” Strategically overlooking the possibility of political pressure or downright corruption, this aspirational view of the court calls on judges to live up to the best traditions of Chinese justice.

Outside the Court

Many plaintiffs understand that judicial decisions can depend as much on what happens outside the court as within it. In the search for sympathetic elite allies willing “to enter the implicit or explicit bargaining arena” on their behalf, they typically both exhaust their net of personal connections and petition strangers.Footnote ⁴⁷ Among a range of potential backers, however, litigants and lawyers often share a common impulse to turn first to the media. Those familiar with the Chinese legal system know that media exposure often catalyses concessions.Footnote ⁴⁸ Local governments may not be afraid of lawsuits, but they are afraid of the spotlight. As one lawyer put it, “if the media didn't exist, public interest litigation wouldn't be possible” because external scrutiny heightens accountability and, in so doing, brings a degree of power to those who lack it (2007-14). In China, as elsewhere, complaints easily go unheard unless “perceived and projected.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Media reports, often submitted as evidence or mentioned in lawyers’ closing statements, remind judges of a wider audience and broader social responsibility. At the same time, sympathetic coverage lends litigants a measure of protection by informing opponents that they are being watched (2007-50).

Not all types of media attention are the same, however. Although litigants and lawyers eagerly court domestic coverage, most are more reluctant to talk to the international media. While foreign attention can intensify pressure and bring results, it can also give complaints an unwanted radical cast (2006-10; 2007-18; 2007-53; 2007-75). At the very least, caution is called for. One well-known lawyer advised complainants not to take money from international reporters or pass on government documents because those actions could later be interpreted as leaking state secrets (2007-100). Within China, local media outlets are not allowed to report on events above their administrative level and, in addition, are often barred by the local propaganda department from covering stories regarding locally powerful polluters (2007-15; 2007-18; 2007-21; 2007–82; 2007-109). In contrast, the national media are generally free to report any story that does not implicate officials above the county level (2007-40; 2007-75) and are more likely to provide in-depth coverage of environmental disputes. (At the provincial level and above, environmental reporters say it is best “not to touch a tiger” (2007–75).) In the Pingnan case, plaintiffs found that “the central media were our best allies” (2007–39). The day after a particularly influential news segment aired on China Central Television's News Probe (Xinwen diaocha), for example, the EPB sent out an inspection team (2007-39).

Ad hoc alliances between journalists and litigants reflect the broader rise of the green media and advocacy journalism.Footnote ⁵⁰ The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the emergence of self-identified environmental journalists at mainstream newspapers like China Youth Daily (Zhongguo qingnian bao 中国青年报) and Legal Daily (Fazhi ribao 法制日报). Encouraged by a monthly environmental journalists’ salon started by Green Earth Volunteers in 2001, some journalists began self-consciously using the press to call attention to pollution. Their efforts fit into a larger tradition of Chinese advocacy journalism, characterized by frequent use of the first person and a distinct moral position. Even outside the op-ed page, these reports clearly take sides, usually with the powerless. The influential 2003 News Probe television segment on the Pingnan case, to take one example, interweaves advocacy journalism with investigative reporting, a common combination. The reporter, dressed in glasses and a business suit, is cast as a big city intellectual fighting rural injustice. In standard Mandarin (roughly the class and educational equivalent of Oxford English), he contrasts the plant's emphatic denials of illegal pollution with shots of worn villagers and barren countryside. As the Chinese media are now largely reliant on advertising rather than government subsidies, popular appeal is increasingly important and this kind of story makes good television, replete with villains, underdogs and heroes (2007-38).

Of course, soliciting media coverage is not easy. When litigants and journalists do not share a social circle, contacting the media is challenging. Letters and emails are likely to go unanswered and travelling to news bureaus in major cities is time-consuming and expensive. Nor do even sympathetic journalists necessarily see the newsworthiness of yet another pollution story. Media savvy lawyers brainstorm fresh angles before calling press contacts (2007-82) or simply don't bother pitching run-of-the-mill cases (2007-69). And recruiting a reporter is only the first step. Journalists can be bought off or stories killed by editors under pressure (2007-38; 2007-40). Subtler local evasion, like intransigence from polluters, can also limit the depth and impact of reports. In Hebei, for example, one court released the decision just before Spring Festival to deter media attention (2007-115). In addition, media backlash is a real danger. Irritation with headline-chasing self-appointed heroes can undercut public support as well as engender it. Rather than face accusations of “making a big deal out of nothing” (xinwen chaozuo 新闻炒作), some lawyers avoid the media altogether (2007-94). Others say “the internet is the best choice for poor people” because, unlike reporters, the web never demands money in exchange for coverage (2009-5).

Another part of mobilizing personal networks is taking advantage of connections inside the state. Political embeddedness, such as ongoing formal and informal ties to bureaucrats, can ease the work of case preparation and protect lawyers from harassment.Footnote ⁵¹ Contacts can help with specific favours, like access to environmental reports, and serve as character references. One Beijing lawyer, for example, asks friends in government to spread the word that he is a “good guy” when he is working on a sensitive case (2007-66). Lawyers also use personal ties to talk a case into the courts (2007-77; 2007-111) or convince judges of their point of view (2007-23; 2007-75; 2007-79). Cases can turn on the opportunities provided by personal access, and those who know the right people – often because of social class or education – benefit. Yet networking, although common, is not the only way to find allies. Sympathetic insiders occasionally slip key evidence to lawyers or litigants because their conscience demands it (2007-32). As one official told a Kunming lawyer, “working for the government is temporary, but you are a person for your whole lifetime” (2007-102).

Even as litigants tally contacts and weigh strategies, most struggle with a far more basic problem: maintaining unity. In the months and years leading up to a mass lawsuit, plaintiffs often disagree over both their understanding of the problem and the best solution. The residents of one Sichuan village, for example, were paralysed by competing explanations for high cancer rates including farm chemicals, anger and anxiety, and diet, smoking and drinking.Footnote ⁵² Without a consensus about who to blame, resignation and apathy dominated anger and action. Commitment can also dissipate over the course of a lawsuit, rupturing once solid coalitions. The spatial dynamics of pollution, in particular, generate tensions between plaintiffs unequally affected by the problem. A compensation offer viewed as reasonable by villagers a fair distance from a factory, for example, can be seen as entirely unreasonable by those closer by.Footnote ⁵³ In mixed income communities, class also affects plaintiffs’ ability to escape pollution. In an air pollution case in Hebei, richer residents moved, leaving their poorer neighbours to sue on their own (2007-21). For all of these reasons, it is sometimes easier for lawyers to work with stable associations than ad hoc collections of complainants. A fisherman's association, say, or a homeowner's association typically has leaders in place and existing relationships with government bureaus, both significant advantages in litigation (2007-73).

Staying unified is a problem not only for plaintiffs but also for the broader legal team. Lawyers and clients, as elsewhere, are separated by a gulf of “knowledge, assurance and social standing” and the resulting relationship can be tense.Footnote ⁵⁴ Lawyers complain that plaintiffs are uneducated, grasping and “blind” (mangmu 盲目) to the law (2007-18; 2007-21; 2007-34; 2007-91; 2007-102; 2007-109). Lack of legal knowledge, they say, leads to unrealistic demands and frustration if compensation is not quickly forthcoming (2007-18; 2007-78; 2007-109). The support litigants often demand can be especially irritating. High maintenance clients call frequently to check on the status of their case, report new developments or, in one case, just to talk about family problems (2007-91; 2007-18; 2007-21). My conversation with a Zhejiang lawyer in November 2007 was interrupted by the unexpected arrival of three villagers who had travelled an hour and a half to follow up on the previous day's phone call. The displeased lawyer (possibly also embarrassed in front of a guest) told them their behaviour was “unbelievably irritating” (fansile 烦死了) and to go away and stop wasting his time. “Sometimes,” he later confided, “I just can't help getting angry” (2007-102).

This is all to say that deep power inequalities underlie lawyer–client relationships. Most commonly, clients quietly comply with lawyers’ instructions. As one plaintiff described his relationship with his lawyers, “they told me what to do and I did it” (2007-39; see also 2007-22; 2007-41). While some lawyers are tightly integrated into local communities, legal authority can also shade into neglect or casual condescension as differences in social standing sharpen. In March 2007, I observed a group of Beijing lawyers ask a villager who had travelled for over 24 hours for legal advice to leave the room while they drew up a strategy for his case. Even more telling, we were several minutes into lunch after the meeting before someone noticed that the client wasn't there. “Maybe he got arrested on the way over here,” a lawyer joked as he left the restaurant to look for him.Footnote ⁵⁵ Over the course of a case, initial deference can also shift to resentment. Disagreements over strategy (or fees) can form deeper antagonisms, especially once trust is lost. While lawyers expect that a minority of clients will renege on fees, refusal to pay can still be infuriating and hurtful. Getting cheated after a five-year lawsuit led one lawyer to conclude that lawyers and clients “don't completely trust each other” (2007-91).

Certainly in major cases, the intense pressure of environmental lawsuits cannot help but exacerbate tension between lawyers and plaintiffs. Litigation demands stamina, but anxious plaintiffs often want results. Although lawyers usually warn potential clients of the difficulties ahead, many still worry about disappointing them. “I'm embarrassed,” one lawyer told me, “because their hopes are on me and I can't get any money for them” (2007-54). Nor are successful clients necessarily grateful. “After hearing the verdict,” another lawyer said, “I was so happy that we had won. However, my clients were unhappy that they had not been awarded as much compensation as they had hoped for. Had I lost, they would have blamed it on corrupt court officials, but now that we had won, they blamed it on me.”Footnote ⁵⁶