China announced its dual carbon targets in 2020. If you had turned the clock back 30 years to 1990, you would have found yourself in a country beset by environmental crises.
In the early 1990s, China’s economy moved into the fast lane as a socialist market economy emerged. Its stock market opened up and the country integrated with the global economy, joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. Growth averaged 10% a year between 1990 and 2010, occasionally hitting 13%. It was a growth miracle, the likes of which the world rarely sees.
But that miracle was powered by intensive expansion of energy-hungry and polluting industries. Environmental problems emerged. Chemical plants, paper mills and textile-dying operations turned the waters of eastern China’s Huai River black as ink and created “cancer villages”. Guiyu in Guangdong, south-east China, became the world’s biggest dumping ground for electronic waste. The resulting heavy metal pollution made its fields unfarmable. In the winter of 2011, PM 2.5 levels in Beijing hit 522 micrograms per cubic metre. The World Health Organization (WHO) says 24-hour averages should not exceed 15 micrograms per cubic metre. Air pollution became a matter of widespread concern.
Particulate matter refers to the mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. Some particulate matter comes from natural processes, and it is also generated by human activities such as burning fuel and construction.
Some particulate matter can cause significant health problems for people, especially particles that are so small they can penetrate deep into the body when inhaled. Of particular concern are particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, known as “PM 2.5”.
In response to these crises, environmentalists, academics and officials stepped forward. New mechanisms – environmental impact assessments, ecological redlines, disclosures of environmental information – were set up to protect the environment as the economy grew. A Chinese route to ecological protection was being mapped out.
It has not been an easy road. What pushed policymakers, focused on economic development at the expense of all else, to realise “clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as gold and silver” (to quote President Xi Jinping)? How has China emerged from the smog? These are the questions explored in the new book In Search of Green China, about the struggles and turning points of those 30 years. We sit down with the author – and former Dialogue Earth reporter – Ma Tianjie.
Dialogue Earth: What prompted you to look back at three decades of Chinese environmental protection efforts for this book?
Ma Tianjie: When I was an environmental reporter for China Dialogue [now Dialogue Earth] between 2015 and 2022, I read a lot about the early years of environmental protection in China. Some of those stories made a deep impression on me.
For example, back in the 1990s, there was a lot of reportage on the plight of the Huai River, like Chen Guidi’s “Warning from the Huai River” [1996], which talked about monkeys in a zoo by the river left blinded by irritant pollutants in the water. In 1993, Qu Geping, chair of the National People’s Congress’s Environmental Protection and Resources Conservation Committee, launched the first China Environmental Protection Century Tour, an annual China Central Television News feature, showing viewers nationwide the shocking state of the Huai River, letting them see with their own eyes how serious the environmental damage was. Those vivid images from thirty years ago are, in a way, the starting point of the vigorous environmental movement that came later.
Yet many of today’s younger readers don’t know about them. And if you don’t know about those events, it’s hard to comprehend the huge changes China’s environment has undergone over the past decade or so. How did those changes come about? What were the forces at play? There hasn’t been much written about that process, which made me want to put pen to paper.
Your book discusses milestone environmental incidents: the pollution of the Huai River and the cleaning up of smog; opposition to dams on the Nu River and to incinerator plants next to homes; “environmental storm” crackdowns, and the setting of the dual carbon targets. How has the environmental movement evolved in terms of ideas and strategies?
The smog cleanup of 2013 was a watershed. Prior to that, everyone from environmental organisations to policymakers and green thinkers like Pan Yue wanted to use a bottom-up approach, with multiple actors trying to push for an adjustment to the mainstream approach of extreme developmentalism. At the time, everything was about GDP; the interests of local governments and businesses were closely coupled. Development decisions maximised short-term economic benefits. Green social forces, made up of environmental organisations, environmental reporters and lawyers, tried to challenge and counterbalance that.
The campaign to tackle urban smog marked a paradigm shift. In 2012, the idea of the ecological civilisation was included in a “five-in-one” overall plan describing China’s priorities (economic, political, cultural, societal and ecological) and then added to the Party Constitution and even the People’s Republic of China’s Constitution. Central government abandoned the idea of extreme developmentalism.
The process goes back to 2005, when [former president of China] Hu Jintao put forward the idea of a “scientific outlook on development”. The elevation of the ecological civilisation to that status indicated that the top leadership was no longer solely pursuing GDP growth. A top-down, state-led, conceptually complete environmentalism appeared.
Did that mean the social forces that had opposed extreme developmentalism had finished their work? What role could they still play? I think even a decade later those questions remain unanswered.
In your book you talk of “Chinese-style” environmental governance. What makes it Chinese? What are its strengths and limitations?
Its biggest characteristic is that it tackles environmental issues during a period of rapid industrialisation. There’s a fundamental difference there compared to the path the west has taken. Many environmental successes in the west have come by exporting pollution and “deindustrialising” – but the pollution and the industry moved to China. That global-scale relocation of industry exacerbated China’s environmental crisis, forcing the country to tackle it head-on before fully industrialising.
On one hand, living standards still weren’t high enough. On the other, pollution was already intolerable. And unlike countries in the west, China didn’t have the option of outsourcing the polluting manufacturing industry en masse while moving up the value chain. China couldn’t deindustrialise and still maintain – much less raise – living standards. Nor could it justify large-scale transfers of pollution from the perspective of international justice.
China had to protect the environment while growing the economy. It was a new path; there were no prior examples for us to follow.
These conflicts had to be resolved, despite the lack of room for manoeuvre. China had to protect the environment while growing the economy. It was a new path; there were no prior examples for us to follow.
A top-down approach, led by high-level green theories and the integration of development with environmental protection, can be highly effective. We saw clear evidence of that when China tackled its smog problem. The central government set quantified targets for local governments and set up a monitoring system so local governments couldn’t “cheat”. Disciplinary systems, such as central government inspections, then ensured everyone gave the environment and development equal weight.
The limitation is that it focuses on supply-side changes – ordering steelmakers to cut production, for example – rather than boosting the demand for greener products and encouraging industry to meet that demand. This “supply-side environmentalism” brings immediate results but soon hits bottlenecks, especially when the costs of the changes aren’t covered by increased consumer demand. If buyers aren’t willing to pay a premium for greener products, services and business models, companies won’t come up with new offerings to make up for the loss of the old output, and the economy will not upgrade.
The book mentions several people who played crucial roles in China’s environmental history: Qu Geping, Pan Yue, Liang Congjie, Yu Xiaogang, Wang Yongchen and Xie Zhenhua. But in the past few years we haven’t seen similar “environmental warriors” or high-profile ecologically minded politicians emerge. What do you think about that change?
After a state-led green development system started to take shape with the smog cleanup, extreme developmentalism was cast aside in China’s overall governance model. In my interviews I heard the following: originally, if there was a pollution incident, members of the public would get in touch with local environmental organisations and ask them to help. But then the 12345 environmental hotline was set up by the central government for reporting of those issues, and you also had the Central Environmental Inspectorate. Incidents that once had to be exposed by environmental organisations or the media became managed via that top-down system of oversight. That has meant less of a role for civil society, and you don’t get those environmental hero figures, exposing pollution all over the nation, like you used to.
One important change over the past 30 years is the state’s improved ability to manage the environment. In the past, if there was some big pollution incident, you had to rely on civil society to go and investigate, then apply pressure from the bottom up to try and get something done. But scientific and technical advances mean the government can do more now. Policymakers sitting in Beijing can use atmospheric models to see how PM 2.5 pollution in the city falls if they close a certain factory or limit a source of pollution in Hebei. Those models are tools they can use to come up with strategies for balancing the environment and development. And in the past, you might need a volunteer to go and sit on a riverbank and keep an eye on a waste outlet, reporting any issues to the environmental authorities. Now, we have satellite mapping, databases of pollution sources, drones, mathematical modelling – all helping manage the environment. It’s completely different to how it used to be.
The struggle between developmentalism and environmentalism is a theme running through your book. Are there any case studies that show how to reach balance?
Despite all our progress, we’re still a long way from coordinating the two. Between action on smog and the dual carbon targets, China found a unique solution: environmental targets as a driver, as a whip, to push the economy and industry to become more competitive. Green industrial policy – a huge change – has been a key part of this.
Environmental limits, such as PM 2.5 standards or the carbon peak and neutrality targets, were once regarded as obstacles – costly barriers to development. But there’s a new consensus now that such limits, strategically used, can become a driver of growth. Green restrictions, applied to the economy nationwide, can apply pressure in a beneficial way. Polluting and out-of-date production capacity gets phased out, making space for newer, greener, more competitive alternatives. Then come further breakthroughs and international competitiveness, opening up new markets.
We’re only halfway there, though. The new green industrial sectors – photovoltaic solar modules, lithium batteries, electric vehicles – have the potential to be new growth engines, but there is a long way to go before Xi’s green vision for China is fully realised. Short-term economic and fiscal pressures mean local governments are constantly tempted to go back to more polluting growth models, and that’s likely to be the case for a long time to come.
You say in the book that if China’s environment ministry was granted a decisive role in the early stages of project planning, it would be one of the country’s most powerful bodies. So, beyond existing green policy tools, like environmental impact assessments and ecological redlines, how do you think China will ultimately keep extreme developmentalism at bay?
What we need most now is not more ministerial-level policies, it’s what we call “green macroeconomic policy”: putting environmental restrictions in place at the macroeconomic level. Ministry-level policy tools like environmental impact assessments and energy-saving assessments can play a role in economic transition, but I think building green restrictions into the overall economy is more important. Such binding targets need cross-departmental policy tools. The People’s Bank of China has created financial tools to help reduce emissions, and similar macroeconomic tools are playing an increasingly important role in the green transition.
Thirty years ago, China’s environmental problems were mainly pollution within its own borders. But climate change is a global matter with profound geopolitical implications. What opportunities do you think this presents for China?
The lessons China has learned as it tries to balance the environment with development could be applied in other developing nations. One current opportunity is that many industrialising developing nations want to study the Chinese model. I think this is the right time to summarise that model and communicate the experience and lessons within to our partners in the Global South. This is particularly the case now the US has abandoned global environmental leadership.
City-level exchanges are already underway: Beijing, for example, has been in discussion with peer cities like Jakarta and Delhi on passing on its experience in tackling smog. Overall, broader exchanges on environmental governance models would be valuable. That’s why I wrote this book in English: I want it to be useful to readers in other countries keen to learn how China manages its environment.
