China's Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change
... Earlier, in the Mao era, during the Hundred Flowers movement, the union was dragged into a wave of strikes that shook the country (Perry 1994;Sheehan 1998). Environmental campaigns have tried to loop in the State Environmental Protection Agency and state media (Mertha 2008;Sun and Zhao 2009). Advocates for people with physical disabilities have made effective use of the Disabled Persons Federation, whose founder and first chairman was Deng Pufang, the first son of Deng Xiaoping (Chen and Xu 2011). ...
... In recent years, an increasing number of signs indicate that the "honeycomb" is starting-but only just starting-to break down, especially in the area of environmental activism. A decade ago, Andrew Mertha (2008Mertha ( , 2009 argued that rural Chinese mobilizing against hydropower projects succeeded most when they expanded the sphere of debate and reached beyond their immediate connections for allies. Recently, in their detailed case study of a campaign opposing an incinerator, Maria Bondes and Thomas Johnson (2017) elaborate how linkages emerged horizontally between local residents and people involved in similar campaigns elsewhere and vertically between local residents and ENGOs, anti-incineration experts, and lawyers. ...
... First, unrest may reverse or change particular projects, as noted. Because of local protests, unpopular polluting industrial projects might be cancelled, major dam-building plans withdrawn, hospital privatization proposals reconsidered, and attempts to restructure steel mills put on hold (Johnson 2013;Li 2013Li , 2019Li 2011;Mertha 2008;Tang 2018;Wong 2016). Contention can even lead to policy change or adjustment at the national and provincial levels and even facilitate the development of public participation channels. ...
China has become a land of social protests. Yet the Chinese state possesses considerable capacity and is rising on the world stage day by day. Why and how do Chinese people take to the streets? Where does their activism lead? This paper draws on a rich body of existing literature to provide an overview of the broad landscape of Chinese contentious politics and to dig deeper into a few common or emerging forms of social conflict. It then explores the various structural and political opportunity-based explanations for why protest occurs in China, before describing the ways in which different organizations and different framings of issues by citizens affect how protests play out. Shifting to where protests lead, the paper briefly surveys a variety of coercive and conciliatory institutions China possesses for social control and then documents distinct patterns in the state’s handling of different types of resistance—repressive, tolerant, concessionary, and mixed approaches—followed by an examination of the multifaceted impact of unrest. The conclusion offers suggestions for future researchers. Reviewing major concepts, debates, perspectives, and emerging research directions in studies of contentious politics in the world’s most populous country, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of authoritarian politics and authoritarian resilience more generally.
... La participation des citoyens au processus de prise de décisions politiques s'impose de fait avec la controverse sur les barrages de la rivière Nu, un vaste complexe dont la puissance devait dépasser celle du barrage des Trois Gorges : la grande campagne médiatique de 2003 permet finalement la suspension de ce projet de barrages. C'est la première fois qu'un projet d'une telle ampleur est arrêté grâce à la pression de l'opinion publique (Mertha, 2008;Geal, 2013: 256). ...
... Les journalistes peuvent alors exprimer des critiques jusqu'alors considérées comme intolérables. La question des ressources est cruciale pour les journalistes et les militants : il est primordial de connaître le fonctionnement du système, d'avoir des réseaux au sein du Parti et de comprendre comment et jusqu'où porter la critique (Mertha, 2008;Salmon, 2016). Les journalistes employés à vie dans des médias de Parti disposent à ce titre d'une place stratégique, ce qui explique le fait, en apparence paradoxal, que des grands noms du journalisme militant appartiennent à cette catégorie. ...
... Les protestations directement impulsées par les citoyens contre des projets polluants se multiplient : incinérateurs de déchets, industries polluantes, usines chimiques et notamment usines de paraxylène. Les reportages dans les médias traditionnels continuent toutefois à jouer un rôle certain : ils augmentent les probabilités de réussite des mouvements et limitent les risques de répression violente (Mertha, 2008;Lee & Ho, 2014;Xu, 2013). ...
FR. Alors que les journalistes militants ont été un rouage essentiel à la construction de l’environnement comme problème public en Chine, les jeunes journalistes cherchent au cours des années 2000 à se distinguer de leurs aînés en se faisant reconnaitre par la mise en avant d’un professionnalisme et d’une expertise indépendante et objective. Pourtant ce discours entre en contradiction avec leur aspiration à l’engagement. Ils continuent à jouer, dans les limites de ce que permet la censure, un rôle engagé et critique, même si la nature et la forme de leur engagement ont changé et qu’il s’accompagne d’investigations et d’analyses plus approfondies. Ce désir d’engagement devient en revanche difficile à assumer lorsqu’ils sont en situation de réflexivité. Il se heurte à la fois à l’influence du modèle du journalisme à l’américaine et à la volonté de se forger une identité nouvelle fondée sur des valeurs qui les tiennent loin de l’image de militant de leurs aînés dont l’impartialité et les compétences ont publiquement été remises en cause par des scientifiques pro-barrages dans les années 2000. Dans le sillage des réflexions menées sur la subjectivité journalistique par Cyril Lemieux, cet article prend au sérieux les contradictions qui existent au niveau de l’individu. Ce faisant, il entend apporter un nouvel éclairage sur les mécanismes d’évolution du rôle des journalistes dans la construction des problèmes publics. Il cherche à rendre compte du rapport complexe qu’ils entretiennent à leur mission ainsi que des difficultés qu’ils ont à accorder leurs différentes aspirations et à faire concorder discours de légitimation et pratique. Il montre que le flou d’un continuum entre journalistes, militants et internautes est à l’origine d’une crise de légitimité qui participe à la transformation de la rhétorique journalistique. Cherchant à s’éloigner des contraintes que représente pour eux le politique, ils s’engagent en fait dans un processus de requalification des rapports entre journalisme et politique qui affecte leur manière de penser et de mettre en œuvre leur mission et leur implication dans la construction des problèmes publics. L’analyse se base sur des entretiens semi-directifs avec des journalistes chinois couvrant le domaine environnemental ainsi que des observations participantes dans une association environnementale pékinoise dont l’objectif principal est la formation des journalistes de l’environnement. Elle se nourrit également d’un corpus d’articles de journaux, de sites internet, forums et réseaux sociaux. *** EN. While activist journalists have been an essential cog in framing environmental issues as a public concern in China, young journalists in the 2000’s seek to distance themselves from their predecessors by emphasizing higher levels of professionalism as well as an independent and objective expertise. Yet this discourse contradicts with their aspiration of activism. They continue to play, within the limits of what censorship allows, an engaged and critical role, even if the nature and form of their involvement has changed and is accompanied by more in-depth investigation and analysis. The will to engage, however, becomes difficult to sustain when they are in a reflexive situation. It collides with both the influence of the American-style journalism models and the aspiration to build a new identity based on values that keep them away from the militant image of their predecessors, whose impartiality and competence were publicly questioned by pro-dam scientists in the 2000s. In line with Cyril Lemieux's work on journalistic subjectivity, this article considers contradictions present at the individual level. In doing so, it aims at casting a new light on the mechanisms underlying the evolution of the role of journalists in the construction of public problems. It attempts at exposing the complex relationship journalists have with their mission, as well as the difficulties they have in harmonizing different aspirations and in reconciling discourse of legitimization with practice. It demonstrates that the blurring of a continuum between journalists, activists and internet users is at the origin of a crisis of legitimacy that participates in the transformation of journalistic rhetoric. Seeking to distance themselves from the constraints posed by politics, they are in fact engaging in a process of re-qualification of the relationship between journalism and politics that affects how they think and implement their mission and their involvement in the construction of public problems. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with Chinese journalists working on environmental issues, as well as participant observation in a Beijing environmental association whose main purpose is the training of environmental journalists. It also draws on a corpus of newspaper articles, websites, forums and social networks. *** PT. Embora os jornalistas militantes tenham sido uma engrenagem essencial na construção do meio ambiente como uma questão pública na China, os jovens jornalistas nos anos 2000 procuravam se distinguir dos profissionais mais velhos promovendo o profissionalismo e a experiência independente e objetiva. Entretanto, este discurso contradiz suas aspirações de engajamento. Eles continuam a desempenhar, dentro dos limites do que a censura permite, um papel engajado e crítico, mesmo que a natureza e a forma de seu engajamento tenha mudado e venha acompanhada de investigações e análises mais profundas. No entanto, este desejo de engajamento torna-se difícil de assumir quando eles estão em uma situação de reflexividade. Ela esbarra tanto na influência do modelo jornalístico de estilo estadunidense quanto no desejo de forjar uma nova identidade baseada em valores que os mantêm longe da imagem militante dos colegas mais velhos, cuja imparcialidade e competência foram publicamente questionadas pelos cientistas pró-damas nos anos 2000. Na esteira das reflexões de Cyril Lemieux sobre a subjetividade jornalística, este artigo leva a sério as contradições que existem em nível individual. Ao fazer isso, pretende lançar luz sobre os mecanismos de evolução do papel dos jornalistas na construção dos problemas públicos. O trabalho procura dar conta da complexa relação que esses profissionais têm com sua missão, bem como das dificuldades que eles têm em conciliar suas diferentes aspirações e em conciliar a legitimação do discurso e da prática. Mostra que a indefinição de um continuum entre jornalistas, ativistas e internautas está na origem de uma crise de legitimidade que participa da transformação da retórica jornalística. Procurando distanciar-se das restrições que a política representa para eles, esses jornalistas estão de fato engajados em um processo de requalificação da relação entre jornalismo e política que afeta sua forma de pensar e implementar sua missão e seu envolvimento na construção dos problemas públicos. A análise é baseada em entrevistas semi-estruturadas com jornalistas chineses cobrindo o campo ambiental, bem como observações dos participantes em uma associação ambiental de Pequim, cujo objetivo principal é a formação de jornalistas ambientais. Ela também se baseia em um corpus de artigos de jornais, sites, fóruns e redes sociais. ***
... However, to construct a large dam the cost is not just the initial capital but also the cost to the river ecosystem and the communities on the watershed. Rivers form the lotic ecosystem, with which wildlife, fish, plants and microorganisms maintain an interdependent relationship (Mertha, 2008). After a large dam or a cascade of dams has been erected, water flow is channelled to huge reservoirs which may induce earthquakes. ...
... The dams on the China side cut through the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site. Instead of preserving the world heritage, the Chinese authority even lobbied United Nations officials to take out some sites to pave the way for dam construction (Mertha, 2008). The cascade of 13 dams will affect 7,000 plant species, 80 species of rare and endangered terrestrial animals and 25 fish species in the watershed (Salween Watch, 2016). ...
... 2. "Scientists emphasize that the link between the dam and the failure of the fault has not been conclusively proved, and that even if the dam acted as a trigger, it would only have hastened a quake that would have occurred at some point" (LaFranière, 2009 6. In China, the civil society is less organized; they consist of, the NGO Green Earth Volunteers, academia and outspoken journalists (Mertha, 2008). Myanmar gradually opened up since 2010 and achieved a democratic general election in 2015; subsequently, local NGOs jointly formed the Burma River Networks to advocate the rights of groups of ethnic minorities in Thailand on the issue of river dams. ...
Purpose-This paper aims to study dams on transboundary rivers. In this study, the case of the Nu-Salween-Thanlwin River is reviewed. This study is an attempt toward developing a conceptual model to explain the unequal hydropower exchange of hydropower dams on transboundary rivers. Design/methodology/approach-This paper reviews big dam project plans on the Salween-Thanlwin River near the Myanmar-Thailand border from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. The evidence is drawn from an extensive review of academic literature, reports, newspapers and websites on this topic. Cascao and Zeitoun's (2010) four pillars of power, namely, geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power, are reviewed in the case of the Salween-Thanlwin River and its riparian states. Findings-On the basis of a realist discourse, power relationships between dams and their socio-environmental effects are discussed from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. Multiple levels of power asymmetry regarding geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power are observed. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers. They invest in hydroelectric dams of adjacent developing states and buy back most of the electricity generated to fuel their industrialization and urbanization. Weak states generally do not have high bargaining power. They depend on the investment of high material power states for domestic and economic development and gain from the export of electricity. However, the externalities of hydropower dams are transferred to these weak states. This contributes to an unequal hydropower exchange model. Practical implications-The model provides an analytical framework for hydropower dam projects through which comprehensive and multidimensional views are extracted. Academia, policymakers, private developers, international development agencies and nongovernment organizations will have a better understanding of hydropower dam projects and the interactions among riparian states. Originality/value-This conceptual model stems from Cascao and Zeitoun's (2010) four pillars of power-geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power. The author limits the framework to hydroelectric dams in transboundary rivers. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers that dominate the dam development projects and exchange process.
... Moreover, dams often have local consequences through displacement and inundation of places (Oliver-Smith, 2010), with radical and irreversible impacts on Indigenous culture and identities (e.g., Windsor & Mcvey, 2005). At the same time, dams occupy a special place in national development imaginaries, symbolizing modernity and development with the substantial financial gains promised from hydroelectricity (Khagram, 2004;Mertha, 2010). These tensions around dams reflect political processes of (re)distribution of natural resources, affecting environmental change and human security. ...
When large hydropower dams are planned in conflict-affected regions, these projects can exacerbate pre-existing tensions and conflicts. This article focuses on the conflicts surrounding Myanmar’s controversial Myitsone and Hatgyi dam projects. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the findings demonstrate how politicized identities influence local mobilization and grassroots efforts to resist dams amid violent conflicts. Comparative analysis reveals the multifaceted nature of resistance mobilization in conflict settings, highlighting the role of ethnic solidarity, identity-based framing, alliance building, and social imaginaries. In both cases, civil society activists sought to generate support among co-ethnic populations by invoking their shared lived experiences and suffering from protracted conflicts. This framing succeeded in amplifying emotions and solidarity, and strengthening grassroots resistance. In addition, powerful ethnic resistance organizations lent their support to opposing dams, thereby boosting the significance of the resistance. However, the involvement of armed groups can undermine cooperation between civilian populations living under different political authorities, as shown in the Hatgyi case. Differing social imaginaries of a river—whether it is considered nationally significant or peripheral—have distinct political ramifications for resistance. The article underscores the centrality of underlying social psychological processes as the drivers of local resistance and environmental conflicts in conflict settings.
... In the post-Mao era, increasing environmental degradation (such as soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, floods, and other natural disasters) has made environmental protection an issue of increasing concern in China (Economy, 2010;Lang, 2002;Mertha, 2014;Shapiro, 2015;Stem, 2013;Thornber, 2019;Tilt, 2009;Zee, 2022). The deteriorating environmental conditions andto a certain degree -China's desire to be part of the global community have forced the government to make environmental protection a central policy (Li and Shapiro, 2020;McElroy, 2019), and a series of environmental protection policies has been issued since the 1990s. ...
Using the rotating credit association created by a Lisu village, called the "village bank," this study explores the social forces that have shaped, limited, or activated the ethnic community's local environmental agency in southwest China. We argue that while the inherited elements of the Lisu indigenous beliefs could help local communities meet the ecological needs of our time, offering different ethics and perspectives to challenge the pursuit of material abundance based on extractive economic modes, the Lisu's social and economic behavior is not solely determined by their religious beliefs. In the post-Mao economic reform era, village banks have become a fresh way through which Lisu villages activated their environmental agency, trying to achieve a balance between environmental protection and poverty reduction. Lisu's "ambivalent" stance on environmental protection reflects the interactions between state-orchestrated development, NGOs, and the tension between maintaining tradition and reducing poverty.
... To be sure, based on its constitution, China is a unitary state in which all subnational governments are part of the government hierarchy and under the authority of the central government. Nevertheless, Chinese politics is best conceptualised as fragmented authoritarianism, which is characterised by both disjointed decision-making below the top level of authority and 'deep jurisdictional cleavages' between bureaucracies (Lieberthal, 1995;Lieberthal & Lampton, 1992;Mertha, 2008). ...
... Grassroots NGOs also vary in their approach to policy advocacy. While many organisations use institutionalised participation and personal connections to influence policy, some grassroots eNGOs that are more critical of the state have resorted to confrontational tactics, such as protests and media campaigns, to exert popular pressure on the government (see Mertha 2008). ...
... 4 Foley and Edwards 1996. 5 Giersdorf and Croissant 2011;Mertha 2008;Spires 2011;Yabanci 2019. 6 Fu 2018;Hildebrandt 2013;Lee and Zhang 2013;Teets 2014;Tsai 2011;van Rooij, Stern, and Fürst 2016. ...
... This reading may enrich the flourishing debate on infrastructure-led regional development (Bailey et al., 2020;Glass et al., 2019). In China, this has for long privileged a technopolitical perspective centred on studying peculiar infrastructural systems (e.g., Tilt, 2014;Webber et al., 2017) and the supply of specific services (e.g., Boland, 2007;Mertha, 2008). While considering infrastructures themselves as units of analysis is a fruitful starting point, we suggest a deeper engagement with the new spatialities they generate, and the relations they establish with their environments. ...
This study of the infrastructure-led developments and urban–rural relations in Liangjiang New Area (Chongqing municipality), Lanzhou New Area (Gansu province) and Zhengbian New District (Henan province) reveals the complex and multifaceted interactions of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with specific contexts and pre-existing trends. Far from depicting a homogenizing dynamic deriving from participation in a project often conceived in monolithic geopolitical and geoeconomic terms, the focus on spatial transformations emphasizes the need of nuanced and textured readings to embrace the diversity of urbanizations emerging along the BRI. Based on these situated and detailed descriptions, it is possible to place BRI developments in a critical comparative register, to develop alternative narratives and eventually to create a new shared language.
... More specifically, scholars recognize that local actors have been using judicial innovations to advance their environmental agendas over the past decades. Many find that such entrepreneurship is often achieved by navigating China's "fragmented authoritarianism" or "political ambivalence," under which "there is a tolerance interval within which peripheral officials have leeway to move politically without exposure to an outsize risk of political repression" (Mertha, 2008;Stern, 2013;Kinkel, 2022, p. 25). For instance, Alex Wang and Gao observe that Chinese local courts had developed novel rules on standing, jurisdiction, and remedies of environmental PIL years before the promulgation of relevant national laws (Wang & Gao, 2010). ...
Although judicial empowerment has become increasingly common worldwide, the expansion of judicial powers in authoritarian countries faces persistent obstacles, such as institutional dependence, lack of political clout, and the repression of civil society. Through empirically examining three cases of environmental legal entrepreneurship under China's new public interest litigation (PIL) system, this study aims to reevaluate the patterns and limits of judicial expansion under authoritarianism. It finds that Chinese judges, prosecutors, and NGOs have been able to leverage the PIL system and their respective institutional advantages to substantially expand judicial oversight on eco-environmental protection. However, the state has established boundaries for such legal entrepreneurship in terms of subject matter, institutional autonomy, and geographic reach, effectively confining them within political spheres considered unthreatening to the regime. Such quarantined judicial expansion shields relevant actors from authoritarian governments’ tendency to suppress legal mobilization and thus may be a more viable form of judicial expansion in nondemocratic settings.
... The administrative rationality of rural water development policy therefore positioned central government as the primary driving force, but with implementation depending on local-level entities (county and township governments and villages). Referred to as "fragmented authoritarianism" (Mertha, 2009), this rationality implies that Chinese central government policies were shaped by the functional and territorial bureaucracies that were charged with policy implementation (Clarke-Sather, 2012;Mertha, 2008Mertha, , 2009, leaving ample room for adaptation by local actors (Ahlers & Schubert, 2015). The result was localized water management rules, practices and forms of decision-making (Hoffman, 2009;Jeffreys & Sigley, 2009). ...
This paper examines the politics of rural water governance in China through a governmentality lens and village water intervention case. The China Rural Drinking Water Safety Project (RDWSP) was an attempt to control water, while also serving as a tool of power to impel the rural population towards national development goals. The authors analyzed official documents and conducted interviews in a village in Shandong Province to investigate the RDWSP's rationale and practices, as well as how water access and management were negotiated by rural water users. The paper argues that (1) confronted with a decline in local governance capacity and in an effort to rectify the mistakes of the supply-driven, technocratic paradigm, the RDWSP attempted to integrate social, environmental and economic concerns but did not achieve that goal; (2) the decline in local governance capacity and people's pragmatic everyday strategies contributed to an individualized approach to solving water problems, reflected in people's disengagement from the government project and local participation, an effect that may sustain people's marginalization and exclusion from good-quality water access and management. Using the Chinese water project as an example, the paper contributes to the debate on state-induced water control versus civil society “counter-conduct” formed by daily interactions. Furthermore, it enriches the study of politics in general by presenting the state as a site of contested institutionalization and ongoing negotiations, confronted by everyday narratives and encounters with marginalized citizens that go far beyond and are far more complex than overt resistance or covert weapons of the weak.
... These campaigns are regarded as the most prominent environmental movements in China and as a watershed in Chinese environmentalism, and they are referred to as a symbol of the auspicious future of grassroots ENGOs. Studying several antihydropower cases involving grassroots ENGOs, Mertha argues that environmental civil organizations can make use of the gap in China's fragmented political system and, in turn, influence government policy [38]. Büsgen states that grassroots ENGOs have become an important force for promoting an alternative view in China [39]. ...
Whether Chinese grassroots environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) have played a significant role in Chinese environmental decision-making remains a subject of debate. Like companies, ENGOs seek ways to apply social internet of things to deliver quality services in increasingly complex environments, enhance capabilities, engage partners, and thereby influence governments. This research reanalyzes two ant-dam movements in Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces to assess which strategies ENGOs deploy, how they exert their influence, and to what extent they have influenced Chinese environmental decision-making. We identify three strategies adopted in the two cases. The first is a bottom-up (public) strategy that involves mobilizing the media and celebrities to exert public opinion pressure on the Chinese government. The second is a top-down (international) strategy that involves gaining the sympathy and support of the international community to exert international pressure on the government. The third is a flank-attack (political) strategy that involves winning over deputies of the Chinese NPC and CPPCC and members of Chinese democratic parties to exert political pressure on the government. However, all of the pressure exerted only catalyzes and accelerates the process of Chinese environmental decision-making: Its influence is secondary and represents an external cause. The will and determination of the central and local governments are the leading factor and represent the internal determinant of environmental decision-making.
... The hydropower project on the Nu river was approved by the NDRC on 14 August 2003. Before the plan was officially announced, in the spring of 2003, a meeting of hydropower specialists in Kunming saw the local experts supporting the project, and the Qinghua University and Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences (CASS) experts expressing doubts or rejecting the project altogether (Mertha 2008;Yang and Calhoun 2007;Lin 2007). Opposition to the building of 13 dams along the river manifested itself immediately and came from SEPA 10 , civil society organizations, and some experts. ...
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, liberal democracy remained the only ideal model of a political regime applicable worldwide. Then, various students and politicians saw the end of communism as the final and definitive victory of democratic ideology and imagined a future in which democracy would spread everywhere. Democracy spread widely during the 1990s and the early 2000s. The fall of various South American dictatorships and the European Union enlargement caused a transition to democracy in many countries. However, important areas in Eurasia, in particular Russia, China and Iran, resisted democratization and reformed authoritarian regimes rose and consolidated in the region. These regimes proved their ability to survive and influenced their neighbours proposing political models that attracted neighbouring countries’ leaders. Thus, new kinds of authoritarian regimes challenged the idea of the unavoidability of the spread of democracy.
... Mertha 2008;2009;Teets 2014. 15 Putnam 1993Boix and Posner 1998;Ehrenberg 1999. ...
This article explores how the Chinese government aims to maintain social stability by encouraging citizens to become volunteers. We propose that a new type of governance, namely, “state-enlisted voluntarism,” is being deployed in which public security volunteers are mobilized and monitored by the state. Analysis based on ten-year nationwide empirical data gathered from local areas in China suggests that the government intentionally enlists citizens into its hierarchical system to strengthen its administrative capacity and maintain a stable society without the risk of domestic threats. We find that direct enlistment approaches empower citizens as state proxies, and that indirect enlistment approaches ensure that various social stakeholders are comprehensively controlled. In general, the Chinese government has four reasons to institutionalize the state enlistment of voluntarism: to increase human resources at the grassroots; transform social organizations into subordinates; frame policy innovations as political credits; and to avoid blame. Our findings also suggest that China's party-state system mobilizes citizens into implementation-oriented activities rather than engages them in policymaking to maintain social stability at the grassroots.
... A number of researchers have explored the role of information framing in social mobilization around environmental issues in democracies (Matz et al., 2015;Rebich-Hespanha et al., 2015;Zavestoski et al., 2004) as well as in authoritarian regimes such as China (Deng & Yang, 2013;Jian & Chan, 2016;Johnson, 2013;Mertha, 2008). However, previous researchers on the topic have mostly only relied on qualitative evidence and focused on how non-state actors (i.e., policy entrepreneurs and citizens) use framing to facilitate environmental mobilization. ...
Using a mixed-method approach, we explore how the Chinese government frames environmentally controversial projects as well as how citizens may react to the government's framing strategy. Through content analysis of state-run media reports on paraxylene (a chemical product with many industrial implications, also known as PX) and waste incineration plants, we identify the government's most salient framing tactic as scientific greening-positively depicting such projects as technologically advanced, reliable, and green, often citing experts and scientific sources. Through a survey experiment among 280 college students, we test the effects of such positive frames as well as the negative frames that highlight environmental risks and the comprehensive frames that present both positive and negative information. We find that although the positive scientific-greening frames can increase one's tolerance of proposed projects in general, they may also enhance their not-in-my-backyard inclination as compared to the control group. Importantly, both the positive scientific-greening frames and the negative frames reduce citizens' intent to engage in environmental protests. We also find that the negative frames are particularly influential for respondents who have low trust in government. Our findings contribute to the understanding of how framing affects environmental activism in China and elsewhere.
... As Mertha (2008) argues, the NGOs have sometimes been able to push the government to rethink its policy decisions. NGOs have also gradually learned to raise the issues in a way that is easier to be accepted by the government. ...
This study illustrates the interaction of international and domestic factors that influenced China’s stance in the climate negotiations from 1992 to 2015. After providing a historical overview of China’s climate diplomacy, it elaborates on the external and internal factors that have shaped China’s climate diplomacy. At the international level, it examines the pressures that China has faced from both developed and developing countries at the United Nations climate change conferences. At the domestic level, it analyses three factors—China’s political system, its energy scenario and its environmental non-governmental organisations—that pushed China to soften its traditional positions. It ends with an elaboration of the interface of the international and domestic factors that have driven China’s shift away from blunt rejection of mitigation responsibility.
... Nongovernmental organizations are limited in size and scope, heavily regulated, and incapable of directly challenging state priorities. Grassroots protests mounted by those negatively impacted by infrastructure development are managed through a combination of repression and cooptation (Mertha, 2010). ...
While China's own leadership offers their country's economic success as a model for other developing countries, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is instead promoting a very different path of development. Differences between China's own experience and the BRI path are stark in terms of the timing of infrastructure development, the sources of financing, the political conditions surrounding infrastructure investment and the roles of manufacturing versus commodity exports. Yet the BRI does propagate a particular fragment of China's recent experience: a debt-development complex featuring crony-like relationships among policy banks, state-owned construction firms and local/foreign governments. This nexus of interests promotes a risky and often unsustainable development path. The gap between promise and reality limits China's ability to promote a Sino-centric world order while also suggesting the need for scholars to more carefully examine the social transmission belts through which great powers export fragments of their own political and economic structures abroad.
The four major countries of East Asia—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—form one of the most densely populated regions on earth, and through the course of the late 20th and early 21st centuries the region experienced some of its fastest economic growth, propelled by the policies of state-led developmentalism. As a result of this density and these policies, the four countries in turn became some of the most environmentally degraded. As each achieved middle-to-high income status, however, the populace and then the regime in each country realized that they could not sustain either rapid economic growth or popular legitimacy without addressing the environmental consequences of this fast growth. The four states thus changed their fundamental economic policies from pure developmentalism to what we call eco-developmentalism, an attempt to reconcile economic prosperity with environmental sustainability. Although success so far has been mixed, this turn to eco-developmentalism has allowed these states to claim world leadership in mitigating environmental degradation.
This chapter discusses China’s contemporary environmental challenges from both state and societal perspectives, considering transnational drivers and contexts. It begins with an overview of the PRC’s current environmental crisis, its spillover effects beyond its borders, and the consequences of climate change. This is followed by a discussion of government responses and civil society initiatives. Attention then turns to identifying the core challenges that remain, especially in the context of accelerating climate impacts and a shrinking space for environmental activism in domestic politics. The final part of the case study discusses the potential for a more sustainable future that considers the importance of leadership at both the domestic and global levels.
This article focuses on the study of Chinese territorial dynamics produced by the relation between government actors and residents of a southwestern borderland margin. As state policies aim to further integrate remote borderland margins to national territory through modernisation or poverty alleviation development projects, residents live through fast-paced territorial restructuring that bears the risk of social conflicts. To explore the construction of borderland margins as territories, this article studies power relations emerging from integration policies. It draws on a geopolitical approach focused on the study of local protests. From the case study of the Nujiang River Valley (Yunnan), it finds that resident agency to protest can result in the adaptation of government-led territory building.
Examining the twenty years since China acceded to the World Trade Organization, this collection provides an original, systematic assessment of the opportunities and challenges that China has presented to the WTO. Offering in-depth analyses of the 'two-way' relationship between China and the WTO, the contributions explore a range of key issues from the varied effects of WTO membership for China and the global economy to the responses of the WTO members to China's rapid economic growth. It presents diverse perspectives of leading scholars from multiple disciplines, including law, economics, political science, and international relations, as well as practical insights from senior policymakers from both China and the United States. This is an invaluable contribution to ongoing debates about the implications of the rise of China for global economic governance and enriches discussions of the wide-ranging implications of China's growing integration into the multilateral trading system, both now and in the future. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Over the past twenty years, historians and political scientists have explored extensively how structures, institutions, coalitions and recently also information have affected China's environmental governance. Much less is known about how time consciousness has informed political action. This paper draws on theories of historical times to analyse key party and government documents on forest management published between 1949 and 2021. Two research questions are tackled: How has time been negotiated in programmatic ideas of forest development? How has time-consciousness connected to forest policymaking in different historical periods? The findings demonstrate that environmental policies in China were not only informed by ideological struggles over programmatic ideas and how (i.e., by which governance mode and instruments) best manage natural resources. They were also affected by ideological struggles over temporalities and time horizons. The findings draw attention to an under-researched factor in political processes in China and across societies and political systems.
This original analysis of the World Values Survey waves of 2007, 2012 and 2018 reveals important relationships among political trust and satisfaction, happiness, views of corruption, local elections and activism from the last half of the Hu Jintao administration through the first five years of Xi Jinping's rule. These data shed new light on the deeper dynamics underlying the high and growing levels of trust in government documented in other studies. Among this report's more novel findings, we find increased trust in government coincides with decreased local electoral participation, suggesting that participation in local elections is not key to perceptions of regime legitimacy. Views of corruption and a sense of personal efficacy through non-institutionalized forms of political participation such as peaceful demonstrations appear more relevant. Thus, constraints on people's ability to engage in peaceful demonstrations are likely to negatively impact views of regime legitimacy. In addition, the report uncovers demographic variations in these dynamics, indicating that regime legitimacy is more precarious among citizens at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy and among younger Chinese. Overall, these findings complicate existing explanations of regime legitimacy centring on economic performance, nationalism, responsiveness/adaptiveness and efforts to combat corruption.
The answer to the oft-asked question of state-civil society relations and the latter’s role in environmental governance in China seems to be “in the eyes of the beholder.” A number of discrepant accounts, narratives, and theories continue to be offered by China scholars and experts, largely due to methodological reliance on a snapshot of a given space and time. This article takes a different approach. Based on a more nuanced longitudinal analysis, we show that there have been at least three kinds of relationship between the Chinese state and environmental civil society in the last few decades, each defined by a distinct institutional field. The dynamics of these institutional changes have been anything but linear or predetermined. This article contributes to the existing debate by offering a more systematic and analytical account of the nature of state-society relations in China’s environmental governance. Findings also point to the need for more dynamic and evolutionary, rather than static, analyses in future scholarship.
How can youth in developing countries enhance knowledge and capacity for civic
engagement? What role can international development assistance play in youth
civic learning and capacity development? This chapter weighs in on youth civic
engagement from the angle of “social audit,” a participatory tool and approach.
It does so by examining two specific initiatives designed and implemented by the
author in Belize and Guatemala with support from international development
organizations and local universities. In addition to describing the social audit approach,
including the strategy and methodology, this chapter also provides initial
evidence showing that introducing university students in developing countries
to civic engagement, even with short and focused workshops that combine a mix
of pedagogical approaches, has a potential to lay down a foundation to increase
civic engagement and facilitates the development of basic knowledge and skills.
Although international development assistance can play a crucial role in supporting
youth civic engagement in developing countries, the effort will remain
incomplete unless changes in youth attitude and behavior are systematically
measured and effort is sustained through continuous civic engagement support
by local stakeholders, including universities.
China's green transition is often perceived as a lesson in authoritarian efficiency. In just a few years, the state managed to improve air quality, contain dissent, and restructure local industry. Much of this was achieved through top-down, 'blunt force' solutions, such as forcibly shuttering or destroying polluting factories. This book argues that China's blunt force regulation is actually a sign of weak state capacity and ineffective bureaucratic control. Integrating case studies with quantitative evidence, it shows how widespread industry shutdowns are used, not to scare polluters into respecting pollution standards, but to scare bureaucrats into respecting central orders. These measures have improved air quality in almost all Chinese cities, but at immense social and economic cost. This book delves into the negotiations, trade-offs, and day-to-day battles of local pollution enforcement to explain why governments employ such costly measures, and what this reveals about a state's powers to govern society.
This paper contributes to research on central-local relations in China by examining local dynamics and defiance under the Xi Jinping administration. Drawing on a case of a provincial government’s defiance against a central policy - Heilongjiang province’s 2016 ban on genetically modified Organisms (GMOs), this study shows that despite the unprecedented recentralization push in recent years, local defiance still exists and persists. In addition, this study finds that the Heilongjiang provincial government managed to reduce potential political backlash by feeding the public distrust of GMOs, exploiting internal divide and central ambiguity over GMOs, and more importantly, skilfully framing its GMO ban as part of its efforts to implement Xi Jinping’s green development concept.
Disruptions as Opportunities: Governing Chinese Society with Interactive Authoritarianism addresses the long-standing puzzle of why China outlived other one-party authoritarian regimes with particular attention to how the state manages an emerging civil society. Drawing upon over 1,200 survey responses conducted in 126 villages in the Sichuan province, as well as 70 interviews conducted with Civil Society Organization (CSO) leaders and government officials, participant observation, and online research, the book proposes a new theory of interactive authoritarianism to explain how an adaptive authoritarian state manages nascent civil society. Sun argues that when new phenomena and forces are introduced into Chinese society, the Chinese state adopts a three-stage interactive approach toward societal actors: toleration, differentiation, and legalization without institutionalization. Sun looks to three disruptions—earthquakes, internet censorship, and social-media-based guerrilla resistance to the ride-sharing industry—to test his theory about the three-stage interactive authoritarian approach and argues that the Chinese government evolves and consolidates its power in moments of crisis.
In the last three decades, China has taken actions to tackle its environmental issues while the tension between policymakers at the central level and decentralized implementation of such policies has been a major concern. This study investigates how policy clarity and high powered incentive system jointly affect organizational performance in the context of environmental governance in China. Utilizing city‐level data compiled with text data extracted from Report on the Work of the Government from 2004 to 2015 and Difference in Differences (DID) design, we find that the compliance of local officials to protect the environment as well as the actual environmental protection outcome significantly increased. Our study also finds evidence that newly‐appointed Party Secretaries at the city level are the main facilitators of enhancing environmental regulation policies. This research proposes a two by two typology based on the principal‐agent theory explaining how successful environmental governance within this period in China is realized and offers practical implications for those who seek to enhance the effectiveness of environmental governance.
The funeral reforms in China condemn widespread burial practices considered “backward” and “uncivilized” while contradicting core grassroots values. Examining collective tomb land expropriation in a former rural township of Fuzhou hosting important military infrastructures, this article highlights issues of accessibility to ancestral land in the context of rapid urbanization and the resulting transition from village commons to state provisioned public goods. How do the original inhabitants of new urban communities make claims on their ancestors’ tomb land? What tactics are deployed to comply with state policies as well as to safeguard a certain sense of collective identity? This article shows how former villagers’ publicizing strategies of militarizing their ancestors allow for some concessions to be made, despite little room for negotiations left by sweeping urbanization.
How do state authorities cope with popular contention under authoritarian legality? Based on ethnographic fieldwork and legal repression cases in China, this article highlights that conflicting rules and signals regarding contention management can impose considerable pressure on governments and motivate them to respond cautiously, even though the prevailing rhetoric of law-based governance provides a convenient basis on which authorities can legitimize their coercive actions. This study further theorizes a discreet pattern of government reaction under authoritarian legality – progressive legal repression – that rests on bureaucratic processing to overcome political uncertainty and lower potential risks before formally employing criminal sanctions to achieve domination. Instead of directly using criminal penalties to deter unruly protesters and potential dissenters, the preferred state action is to induce them to engage in available legal-bureaucratic procedures. By reconceptualizing protesters’ claims and behaviour as unreasonable and signalling fulfilment of responsibilities, bureaucratic practices help officials to reduce the risks of damaging their political image and receiving disciplinary action, encouraging them to deploy legal repression. This study reveals more complicated dynamics of state repression under authoritarian legality and emphasizes the important effects of procedural practices on governmental responses and the regime's stability.
What is the relationship between internal development and integration into the global economy in developing countries? How and why do state–market relations differ? And do these differences matter in the post-cold war era of global conflict and cooperation? Drawing on research in China, India, and Russia and examining sectors from textiles to telecommunications, Micro-institutional Foundations of Capitalism introduces a new theory of sectoral pathways to globalization and development. Adopting a historical approach, the book's Strategic Value Framework shows how state elites perceive the strategic value of sectors in response to internal and external pressures. Sectoral structures and organization of institutions further determine the role of the state in market coordination and property rights arrangements. The resultant dominant patterns of market governance vary by country and sector within country. These national configurations of sectoral models are the micro-institutional foundations of capitalism, which mediate globalization and development.
Strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers have been rising over the past decade. The state has addressed a number of grievances, yet has also come down increasingly hard on civil society groups pushing for reform. Why are these two seemingly clashing developments occurring simultaneously? Manfred Elfstrom uses extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis to examine both the causes and consequences of protest. The book adopts a holistic approach, encompassing national trends in worker–state relations, local policymaking processes and the dilemmas of individual officials and activists. Instead of taking sides in the old debate over whether non-democracies like China's are on the verge of collapse or have instead found ways of maintaining their power indefinitely, it explores the daily evolution of autocratic rule. While providing a uniquely comprehensive picture of change in China, this important study proposes a new model of bottom-up change within authoritarian systems more generally.
This paper examines China's water governmentality in advancing the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC). It attends to how discourses, used as a political instrument, are framed, justified and contested in the reshaping of international hydrosocial territories. China's official and popular discourses present the LMC as promoting multilateral politics, economic benefits and social integration, while they obscure polarizing politics, external interventions and regional conflicts. Using strategies of positive publicity first, top-down communication and mutual empathy creation, these discourses aim to deflect attention away from controversies and geopolitics in the region to construct governable hydrosocial territories. However, in a transnational context where the Chinese state cannot unilaterally control geographical imaginaries, alternative discourses depict China as a “hydro-hegemon” that poses threats to downstream countries. The discursive dichotomy reflects multiple ontologies of water and power struggles in international river governance, bringing regional stability and sustainable development into question.
Scholars of international politics have long linked states’ quest for prestige with assertions of national power: diplomatic saber-rattling, scrambles for colonies, arms races, and outright war. This thesis charts a sharply divergent, previously neglected, path to international prestige—foreign policy restraint. The argument in brief is that states seek prestige by conspicuously holding back from the use of power and thereby spurning opportunities for national gain. Departing from the prevailing conception of restraint as merely a kind of inaction, this thesis reframes restraint as a performance. Performances of restraint are constituted intersubjectively when a state is perceived to refrain from pursuing its interests to the extent that its power allows. Forswearing the acquisition of nuclear weapons, liquidating profitable military interventions, renouncing territorial claims, de-escalating diplomatic crises, curbing carbon emissions—each of these policies of self-limitation, and many more besides, may constitute performative restraint if recognized as volitional (emanating from the actor’s will) and supererogatory (exceeding the actor’s normative obligations). To secure others’ recognition of their performances, states appeal to existing normative standards of restraint in international society. By conspicuously exceeding those standards, states express both (1) their material capacity—the abundance of underlying resources that equips them to voluntarily forgo self- interested behavior; and (2) their moral character—the exemplary virtues that underlie their prosocial choices. When states believe that they can credibly perform restraint, triggering these signaling mechanisms, they may “hold back” from acquisitive or assertive policies in order to “rise above” others in terms of prestige. Notably, “holding back to rise above” appeals to states as an expressive strategy exactly because it is materially costly and socially non-obligatory. This thesis draws upon insights into the performative nature of restraint from cognate disciplines and everyday life, integrating them into an overarching account with reference to Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model of social action. It illustrates how “holding back to rise above” applies in four diverse historical cases: (1) the United States’ Good Neighbor Policy of non-intervention in Latin America (1933-40); (2) Germany’s post-reunification foreign policy, culminating with its non-participation in the US “Coalition of the Willing” for the Iraq War (1991-2005); (3) India’s decades of spurning of nuclear weapons and championing non-proliferation (1964-98); and (4) China’s restraint of its carbon emissions in the context of global climate change mitigation (1992-2017). In short, the thesis contributes to a wide range of debates in IR over the sources of international prestige and the reasons for states’ costly compliance with social standards.
Regional integration changes domestic decision-making structures, relations among social forces, and power distribution in different ways. While the EU and ASEAN constitute two different models of institutional regionalization, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) offers a test case for a new form of informal regionalization. The official discourse of BRI emphasizes economic interdependency over normative political coherence, but this paper claims that China’s BRI involvement leads to state transformation in target countries. Instead of binding legal frameworks, China facilitates alliances with non-state mediators to allocate official funds and therefore tips the balance of power among sub-state level social forces and political factions domestically. The state practice in target countries also changes in the face of this amalgamation of the formal and informal. Turkey in the MENA region, with energy and transportation sectors are presented as case studies for this argument. Turkey’s engagement with the BRI is shaped by concurrent and conflicting decision-making processes and foreign policy informality. This chapter will present how this engagement occurs and whether it adapts or contests the BRI’s framework in the sectors selected as cases. Drawing on elite interviews and process-tracing, the chapter concludes that the ambiguities in China’s BRI diplomacy toward Turkey reinforce and partially reshape the extant tendencies toward informality in decision-making in these sectors.
Policy researchers often identify crises as one of the preconditions for structural policy change (Boin & ‘t Hart, 2000; J. Hall, 1993; Keeler, 1993).
Modern China is a country that witnesses complex interactions of economic development and sustainability. Based on fieldwork in China, this study applies the Copenhagen School framework to examine the actors, processes and outcomes in prioritizing the environmental sector in China. The study aims specifically to unravel the peculiarities of behavioural changes of the state and society in ecological concerns that lead to the securitization process. It also reappraises the emerging trends in state-society relations in the context of prioritizing ecological security in the country. The study finds that the government under Xi Jinping in China has adopted a number of extra-ordinary measures in terms of legal frameworks and enforcement initiatives, in order to address public concerns emerging from the environmental sector. Major policy shifts towards environmental security include; assigning new functions for conventional security apparatus, prioritizing and elevating environmental institutions, improving top-level design of the environment management system and most significantly, promoting public participation.
This chapter will advance the argument that Work Integrated Learning (WIL) can reinforce active citizenship as illustrated with an example from the South African context. WIL is an approach that holds that students will learn better in a program that integrates theoretical knowledge in the classroom with practical knowledge in the workplace. While WIL is not inherently orientated towards building active citizenship, the strategic use of WIL can result in learning outcomes very similar to civic engagement pedagogy, particularly when conceptualized as a collaborative and participatory form of community-based research. This claim is demonstrated through reflection on a research project conducted by master's candidates at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, in conjunction with a human rights NGO, the Black Sash. The research required students, supported by Black Sash field-workers, to run participatory workshops in various poor communities to explore the impact of the privatization of the social grant payment system in South Africa. We show how the project reinforced the ideas and practices of active citizenship for the students involved and for the fieldworkers from Black Sash with whom they worked. Thus, while not intrinsic to WIL, active citizenship can be built through the strategic use of WIL programs to conduct community-based research or community engagement activities.
Schools and teachers are essential agents of political socialization, even in longstanding developed democracies. A teacher's task is to transfer factual knowledge and nurture support for fundamental political values and interest upon which a democratic classroom relies. To create a democratic classroom, teachers need to be politically interested, knowledgeable, and supportive of fundamental political values. This chapter focuses on the importance of strengthening pre-service teachers' political knowledge, political interest, and support for fundamental political values while studying at universities. Our analysis shows that pre-service teachers differ in their political knowledge and political interest levels depending on their subjects. Furthermore, we show that some support authoritarian government modes and neglect general political values such as gender equality and free elections. For civic education, this result is highly problematic. Our results indicate the need for broader civic education at universities for future teachers.
The chapter evaluates water resources development, focusing on large dams and inter-basin water transfer projects. Hydraulic engineers have built large dams for irrigation projects, flood protection, and hydropower generation. The Three Gorges Dam boasts its mighty capacity of hydropower generation, flood control, and facilitation of inland navigation although various challenges need to be tackled, including resettlement issues. Inter-basin water transfer projects have been significant between North and South China. The South North Water Transfer Project has diverted substantial amounts of water to slake the thirst of North China, particularly around Beijing and Tianjin. A long-term evaluation will be required if the project is able to resolve water shortage in North China against institutional as well as natural hindrances.
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