In a rapidly changing Chinese environment in every sense of the word, it is good to see new books assessing current trends in China's natural environment and the ways China is trying to cope with the downside of growth. Chen's first chapter sets out to describe the environmental problems. From this survey we can already see that he is primarily interested in pollution and climate change, devoting less attention to topics such as biodiversity, soil erosion, and desertification. The four chapters that follow the introduction review respectively the environmental bureaucracy and the mixed impact of trade liberalization, the legal system and its flaws, the role of civil society and its difficulties at being effective in internal and international contexts, and finally a history of China's growing environmental diplomacy from the 1970s down to today.
Although Chen gives some information on the trends of environmental degradation in the aforementioned chapters, he has chosen to flesh out policy development through particular case studies that constitute most of the rest of the book. Specific chapters discuss the 2005 Songhua (Sungari) River toxic spill, the Tai Lake algae problem of 2007, and air quality and its relationship to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. These pessimistic case studies show policy to be largely modified in reaction to negative events rather than proactive. Two additional chapters delve into key international environmental issues: China's role in international climate change politics and China's management of, and benefits from, participation in clean development mechanism projects. China continues to try to hold on to “developing country” status as long as possible while moving to multilateral exchanges and “voluntary action” to avoid compliance. This allows China to obtain benefits from instruments like the clean development mechanism and avoid the imposition of emission targets.
In the final chapter Chen identifies a series of policies that were in the process of being implemented in 2007–08: suspension of projects in polluted river systems, preferential purchase of renewable energy generated electricity, “green credit,” establishment of a Leading Group on Energy Saving and Emission Cutting, green indexes to measure officials' performance, green funds, environmental taxation, pilot zones for environmental protection and eco-city projects, “green insurance,” and the upgrade of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to the ministry level. Since the writing of this book we have seen some progress with some of these policies (“green compensation,” Ministry of Environmental Protection [MEP] upgrade) and not so much in others (green insurance), although it is too early to reach any conclusions. Some of these policies represent old wine in new bottles and many show signs of good intentions at the centre that will be difficult to implement in areas far from Beijing. Chen rightly concludes that Chinese policy has a long way to go before it is green.
Where the book does fall short is in its lack of discussion of policy related to biodiversity and rural/agricultural resource degradation. One could also imagine a chapter dealing with the politics of environmental research in China. There are sections of the book where all references come from one source, which suggests a lack of wide reading on those particular aspects. At points the text also refers to State Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Environmental Protection as the current leading environmental protection organ suggesting that the book was written in the midst of this transition in 2008 that led to the replacement of SEPA with the MEP. This provides some confusion for the reader. Overall, however, this book presents an excellent update of China's environmental policy. Despite some oddities in the English it is highly readable and will be useful for teaching.
