[China Briefing] China's Environmental Issues

Civil disobedience and resistance typically arising under authoritarian regimes are known to emerge from traditional socioeconomic issues such as the suppression of democratic values and the deepening of poverty. China's 'adaptive authoritarianism' is assessed to have successfully controlled the instability that can arise from these socioeconomic dimensions. However, the increasing trend of environmental protests recently reveals that China's quantitative economic growth is increasingly encountering political limitations.

For the past generation, China has adhered to a strategy of attracting and fostering polluting industries and has relatively neglected regulations on pollutant emissions to maintain its low-cost production structure. While this served as a driving force for economic growth in the short term, the severe environmental pollution it faces today has begun to act as a direct impediment to China's growth. For instance, the China National Environmental Protection Agency estimated the costs incurred by environmental pollution to be approximately 3.5% of China's GDP, while the World Bank estimates this cost to be as high as 9% of China's GDP.

As the New Year of 2017 dawned, China was engulfed by the worst smog in its recorded history. In some areas of Beijing, the Air Quality Index (AQI), which measures air pollution levels, exceeded 700, which is 2.5 times the 'hazardous' level indicating that diseases can be caused by air pollution. According to a research team at Yale University, China's average annual fine dust levels are the highest in the world, far exceeding the daily safe standard for fine dust set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The current air pollution in China has an impact equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and it is estimated that 1.4 million people die annually in China as a result. In addition to air pollution, China faces a dire water pollution situation. It is known that 70% of rivers and lakes across China are polluted to a dangerous level, making them unusable even for irrigation. Groundwater, a primary source of drinking water, is reported to be so severely contaminated that contact alone can cause significant harm to the human body in about 60% of cases. Regarding soil pollution, precise conditions are difficult to ascertain as related data was classified as a state secret until 2014, but some recently released data indicates that an area 1677 times the size of Seoul is severely contaminated with toxic heavy metals.

As the perception strengthens that environmental pollution not only negatively impacts macroeconomic indicators but also poses a substantial threat to individual lives, demands for its resolution are rapidly increasing. A survey conducted in 2014 by China Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League of China, revealed that the Chinese public considers addressing environmental pollution a higher priority than the anti-corruption campaign, which the government has been pursuing as its top priority. Consequently, the public's awakening to the severity of environmental pollution is now manifesting in action.

In the past, Chinese citizens' expression of political will primarily took the form of petitions to the government and calls for policy measures, rather than direct action. However, the growing threat of environmental pollution today is leading to more active and substantial demonstrations of power becoming the primary mode of political expression, surpassing previous passive methods. Furthermore, these direct actions often escalate into violent protests. In fact, the frequency of violent protests is gradually increasing as social networks, represented by Weibo, have somewhat mitigated the barriers to collective action.

A notable aspect of environmental protests is their shift from predominantly rural areas in the past to frequent occurrences in urban areas recently. This is likely because the issue of environmental pollution garners broad public sympathy and, at least superficially, does not entail political resistance to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party itself, thus enabling it to gain support across various strata. The increase in these environmental protests is a significant political issue, as it indicates that even if the public recognizes the importance of economic growth, they may cease to support the government if it leads to a decline in living standards due to pollution. Therefore, environmental pollution in China transcends a mere administrative domain of management and operates as an issue closely intertwined with the stable maintenance of the Communist Party regime.

The problem is that the policies currently implemented by the Chinese Communist Party are unlikely to offer a fundamental solution to environmental pollution. Historically, developed Western countries, after achieving economic growth, have mitigated their domestic environmental pollution accompanying industrial development by transferring polluting industries to less developed countries. However, unlike developed Western nations, China cannot employ this strategy due to the necessity of continuously maintaining polluting 'smokestack' industries to support its vast population. While it is true that high-value-added industries centered on cutting-edge high technology are gradually increasing in China recently, smokestack industries, which enable large-scale employment, are not easily abandoned by China. Therefore, China's economic growth strategy, based on a Faustian bargain of exchanging quantitative economic growth for environmental destruction, inherently possesses a fundamental limitation that prevents it from merging with the objective of improving quality of life through environmental conservation.

China's environmental problems are not confined to China alone, considering its vast population and the transboundary nature of environmental pollution's impact. Therefore, a global approach to China's environmental pollution issues is inevitable. Particularly, as China emerges as a new global leader within the world order, resolving environmental pollution issues is a challenge it must inevitably confront. In other words, China is in a position where it must resolve its domestic environmental pollution problems not only for the stability of its domestic politics and the legitimacy of the Communist Party's rule but also to exert influence as a leader in the international political context. Given that many developing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa are adopting the Chinese development model as a benchmark, the global ripple effect of China's environmental pollution problems and environmental policies is intensifying. It is no longer possible to dismiss criticism of its environmental pollution issues as developed Western countries trying to pull the ladder up behind them.

China needs to establish a new growth model that builds the physical foundation for sustainable development, moving away from the environmentally destructive economic growth strategy that imitates existing developed Western countries. Furthermore, it is also necessary to present practical measures (e.g., the goals and direction of urbanization) to realize newly established universal values and norms for humans and nature within this model. Based on a fundamental shift in its view of nature, if China correctly recognizes the essence of the problem and seeks appropriate solutions, its increasingly severe environmental pollution issues today could serve not as a prelude to impending disaster but as a function that highlights the necessity of creating an alternative civilization. ■

Author

Lee Eung-kyun_Professor of Public Administration at Korea University. He received his Ph.D. in Policy Studies from MIT. His main research areas include information-based environmental regulation, regulatory compliance theory, and climate change. Recent publications include "The role of trade associations in environmental compliance under limited enforcement" (2016), "Investigating supportive conditions for participation in voluntary environmental programs" (2016), "The potential role of boundary organizations in the climate regime" (2014), and "The impact of urbanization on per capita carbon emissions" (2016).

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