Week 3: Economic Growth in China

Slides: Economic and Social Reform in China

Our topic for this week is the economic growth in China in the last couple decades, and how this is related to the environmental issues that China is facing today. This would provide us with background knowledge about recent economic trends in China, and set up the stage for our later topic-specific discussions in the coming weeks. One reading assignment is Prof. Liu's paper, but to some extent his paper fails to give us the macro-scopic image that we are looking for. Since I am the only person in our GISP that have really grown up in China, I decided to bring up external materials in my presentation. By doing so, I suggest four interesting themes that we may want to think about again and again during the semester as we are getting deeper and deeper into the field.

Theme 1: Is China having a real economic development or is there just GDP growth?
China has experienced an annual GDP growth about 10% in the last three decades, and it has become one of the largest economies in the world thanks to its huge population. However, a couple of socio-economic issues remains significant in China. The one that receives the most attention in China is probably the rual-urban inequality. Although China is labelled as a Communist Country, it actually has one of the largest rural-urban inequalities among all nations. Policies, including environmental regulations, in China treats rural and urban areas distinctively, which is one thing we have to take consideration of when we talk about environmental regulations in China in the future. In a most recent book published by the central government called "How to See the Seven (Issues)?" (《七个怎么看》), seven socio-economic issues are presented and discussed as the most important issues China is facing today. Surprisingly, environmental degradation is not one of them. On one hand, this reflects a lack of attention from the government. On the other hand, it reminds us of the limited resource that Chinese government can spend on environmental protection. The purpose of our GISP would certainly involve a reconsideration about the development path that China is currently taking.

Theme 2: Is China a centralized nation in an economic sense?
The Liu's paper we read presented three administrative issues in China that are relevant to effective environmental protection: (1) the standard on which officials are selected and promoted, (2) the lack of effective enforcement, (3) the lack of high-level cooperation. In addition to that, I would like to raise a fourth one, which is the lack of low-level cooperation. In our previous meetings, we have noticed the conflicts between local governments and the central government in China. It is true to some extent that China is an economically highly decentralized nation because economic activities are determined, or at least heavily influenced, by local governments on daily basis. This leads to a situation similar to the "tragedy of the commons" because natural resources are often common and transboundary resources.

Theme 3: Is the traditional China environmentally better?
Liu's paper propose an interesting argument that the ecological footprint is not determined by the size of population, but rather by the number of households. He thus also suggest that China, influenced by the West, has experienced a dramatic rise in divorce rate since 1980s, which is partly responsible for the rapid increase in hosuehold number and the pressure on the environment. Whether or not his argument holds is debatable, but this argument leads to an interesting issue that is troubling many Chinese people: which is more environmentally friendly, tradition or modernity? The traditional China possessed several characters that are often considered environmentally good: (1) large family size and strong family value, (2) self-sustaining local agriculture with much organic farming, and (3) low population mobility in geographical sense. China has just abandoned all these characters in its process of modernization in the last thirty of forty years. This also leads us to rethink about China's path of development.

Theme 4: Why Chinese people want to protect the environment? (an ethic question)
Unlike the US that has undergone the environmental movement in the 1960s, environmental movement in China, if there is any, is still at its very early stage. Traditional Chinese environmental ethics are often more anthropocentric, suggesting that people should not protect the environment only for the sake of environment. However, it is also important to point out that the "anthropocentric" is a western term that does not express an accurate meaning here. Man and nature are considered being corresponding with and interdependent on each other by Chinese culture. Although people's mind starts to change in the last century under the influence from the West, the old culture still has a strong legacy. This should not be neglected if we want to think about what kind/level of environmental regulation can be accepted by most Chinese people.

In the end we had a discussion on a legal case that took place in China last year. A farmer in Southwest China killed the last tiger of its endangered species, and was eventually sentenced a twelve-year in prison and a huge fine. This stimulated heated discussion among people across China. I personally think it would be really interesting to find out what would likely to be the sentence if the case happened in the US, which could be an interesting comparison. Since the legal system, especially on environmental issues, is still poorly established and very much under the experimentation stage in China, cases like this reflect the recent trend on its development.