AHP 28: Review: China's Environmental Challenges

Abstract

Judith Shapiro's latest ambitious work picks up the story of modern China's checkered relationship with the environment at approximately the point where her previous study, Mao's War Against Nature (2001), left off. This latest book sets out to address questions of grave importance to China and to the world. The litany of challenges – poisonous water and toxic air, scarcity of water and other resources, deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity – seem nearly insurmountable, despite evidence of considerable attention from the Chinese government and from China's public, and despite the rocket-like rise of China's economic power and political influence in the world. Shapiro adds to this list the growing problems with lapses in environmental justice, both within China and passed on to its neighbours and to the countries with which it trades.1 Not only do growing environmental problems affect China's ability to achieve the government's stated goals of a 'harmonious society' with 'moderate prosperity for all,' but these problems, and the ways that China seeks to address them, are now widely recognized as having major impacts on the entire planet. Chinese demand has become a major factor in the pricing of the world's natural resources, while pollution from Chinese sources, particularly emissions of CO2 and other climate changing gasses, are having global consequences.