There have been a number of studies exploring China's environmental issues and analysing the role of government and society within them over the last decade, but many start with presumptions treating the state and society as monolith units, thereby failing to adequately account for grassroots activity. Bryan Tilt's book fills a gaping hole by providing an ethnographic case study of Chinese environmental discourse. Tilt details the political economy of pollution enforcement at the village level as well as the local reaction to it, as various interests confront each other in direct yet intricate ways. Then, he re-examines the Chinese environmental values and assesses how they have been impacted by the modern industry and global discourse. The author smartly selected Futian township in Sichuan province as the site for the case study because what happens there reflects the common dilemma in rural China. Interviews, surveys and participatory observations are well employed, and the author's delicate application of an anthropologic approach aids the description of details.
The book is compiled from three papers by the author published between 2006 and 2007. After an introduction in chapter one, the following chapters two, three and four discuss changes in economic patterns across China and the accompanying environmental costs. The aforementioned township, situated close to a major iron and steel corporation, established small ancillary factories in order to gain a peripheral share of the profit. However, inefficient productivity and financial difficulties forced the local government to sell these enterprises to outsiders. Fiscal reliance on crude factories outweighed environmental concerns in directing local policy. The local peasants did not gain any benefit from the factories, and had to suffer the polluted air with a heavy density of poisonous particulates as well as contaminated water and soil.
It was under such circumstances that the local society determined to protect the environment. Chapters five and six address the environmental values of the local residents and their struggle. Contrary to the mainstream viewpoint which assumes that poor people do not concern themselves with the importance of environmental protection, empirical evidence in Futian proves the opposite. Traditional Confucian and Daoist wisdom views human beings as integral parts of nature with a role in preserving its perfect balance. Generations of ordinary farmers practised this abstruse idea and sought to mitigate the threat of pollution from daily agrarian production. It is the modern wave of industrial investors and labourers from outside the community that downplay the degree of the problem. Hence, the author contends that the different cognitions of environmental protection are moulded by the present social, cultural and economic lifestyle (p. 106). The complaints and resistance of the peasants and media discourse compelled the local environmental protection bureau (EPB) to shut down the factories. The author argues that the trend of weak conformity to strict environmental regulations in China is due to complex reasons. In contrast to the ideal design of the central government, the local level EPBs have to make a trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection, and a fair compromise might only be reached when society itself resorts to the strategies of “rightful resistance” (Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Chapters seven and eight investigate the definitions of the terms “sustainable” and “development,” exposing complicated nuances in the Chinese context. Tilt succeeds in capturing the significance and the uniqueness of local cultures, and applies this perception to understand Chinese environmental values, and to explain the internal dynamics of the community in the struggle of achieving “sustainability.” The author concludes that the manner in which people conceive and reconstruct their ecological and social systems is critical and crucial to the future of China's environment.
The book, however, has some limitations. Although “civil society” is one of its key conceptions, it is not well defined. Given the thick literature on the role of Chinese civil society (see the works of Brook, White & Howell, Perry, Calhoun, Saich, Zweig, O'Brien and Li, Yang, Fewsmith, etc.), it is somewhat unfortunate that the author did not consider much of a peer review before advancing his own opinions. In addition, the author raised many questions about the connections between values and civil society (p. 121) without providing answers. In this sense, perhaps “society” would be more appropriate than “civil society” in the book title. Furthermore, as the book is composed of research the author conducted years ago, some of the second-hand data should have been updated to better depict the rapidly developing situation. Finally, the author attributes the value collision between outside investors and the local farmers to the fact that the former lack attachment to the community, while the latter are unable to share industrial profits, but he does not consider whether their values would still persist if the peasants were allowed to join the factories and earn a higher income.
Overall this is an interesting and illuminating book for scholars who wish to understand the present ecological situation in rural China and the daily conflict between values and actions that confront the local governments and citizens of China.
