China’s Environment: History, Policy, and Sustainability

Fall 2002, Mondays 10-1pm, 139 Mulford Hall

Organizers/Instructors: Emily T. Yeh (ERG), mleyeh@socrates.berkeley.edu

and Mark Henderson (ESPM), mhenders@nature.berkeley.edu

Course Description

With over one-fifth of the world's population and an increasingly important role in global politics, China must be considered seriously in any attempt to address sustainable development. Legacies of "three thousand years of unsustainable growth" and "Mao's war on nature" have only been exacerbated by two decades of rapid economic development, unchecked pollution, and increased inequality. With its recent history of dramatic policy swings of repression and accommodation, China's social and environmental future remain anything but clear.

In this course we’ll cover the extensive recent literature on China’s environment. We will begin by considering a range of analytical approaches that can be used to conduct research on China’s environment, including environmental history, institutional politics, property rights, economics, and political ecology. From there, we will delve into the historical dimensions of China’s environmental problems, examining the legacies of late imperial, republican, Maoist, and post-Mao policies on resource use. We will then turn to case studies of different natural resource sectors, including cropland, grassland, forest, and water resources. Finally we’ll review the ways in which the Chinese state has responded to environmental challenges at the local, national, and global levels, assessing the prognosis for environmental protection and sustainable development in China. The key questions to be addressed throughout the course are:

How have different political ideologies framed conceptualizations of nature and the approaches taken to resource exploitation and environmental protection in each era from late imperial times to the present?
Which parts of the country, which peoples (ethnicity, gender, class), and which natural resource sectors have been the winners and losers in the different eras?
What have been the crucial turning points in China's environmental crisis, and how do various historical “environmental imaginaries” live on in the present?

This will be a 4 unit seminar. The course is open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Students should have some familiarity with either modern China or with environmental studies. Assignments will include short critical reviews of articles or monographs on Chinese environmental history, and critical annotated bibliographies of academic literature on various natural resource sectors in China. Assigned readings will be in English, but students with Chinese language skills are encouraged to introduce additional materials from China into the class discussions and annotated bibliographies.

China’s Environment: History, Policy, and Sustainability is generously supported in Fall 2002 by the Group in Asian Studies and the ESPM Division of Society and Environment.

Course schedule

Week	Date	Topic	Lead	Assignments
1	8/26	Course overview and logistics	E/M	Choose discussion weeks
	*9/2*	Labor Day holiday
2	9/9	China’s environment	E/M	Choose monographs
3	9/16	Theoretical frameworks	E	Choose assignments
4	9/23	Historical and cultural legacies	M
5	9/30	New environmental histories	E/M	Assignment 2 due
6	10/7	Institutions and implementation in the PRC	M	Assignment 3a due Thursday before topic is covered
7	10/14	Forestry I	E/M
8	10/21	Forestry II	E/M
9	10/28	Cropland	E
10	11/4	Grasslands	E
	*11/11*	Veterans’ Day holiday		Assignment 3b due Monday 11/18
11	11/18	Water resources and hydropower	M	Assignment 3b due Monday 11/18
12	11/25	Student-selected topics
13	12/2	Pressures on the state: civil soc/int'l politics	E/M	Assignment 3c due

Assignments and Grading

Assignment #1 includes class participation, attendance, and discussion preparation questions or comments for two weeks. Each student must choose two weeks (in addition to the bibliography/resource weeks) in which she or he will help lead discussion with two or more provocative questions or discussion points about one or more of that week’s readings. (25% of final grade.)

Assignment #2

For week 5, each student will choose one monograph and make a very brief presentation to the rest of the class. In addition, undergraduates will write a short (3-5 page) critical review of that monograph, drawing on materials and theoretical frameworks covered in the class. Graduate students will write a short (3-5 page) critical review comparing two works, the first of which must be a book-length monograph and the second of which can be either another monograph or an environmental history article. Histories other than the ones listed on the syllabus can be selected in consultation with the instructors. (25% of final grade.) Due in class, week 5.

For Assignment #3, pick TWO out of the following three options (each 25% of final grade):

3a. Prepare a critical annotated bibliography of at least 10 items from the academic literature on one of the resource sectors covered in this course (water, cropland, grasslands, or forests). You should draw on the materials listed in this syllabus and on additional materials from other sources. Evaluate materials in terms of appropriate theoretical frameworks and the insight that they provide into the key questions of this course. Distribute to other class members and make a short presentation of these readings and how they relate to the required readings for that week. Due Thursday before the sector is covered in class (weeks 6-10).

3b. Prepare an additional critical annotated bibliography covering another resource or environmental sector, selected in consultation with the instructors. Suggestions include marine resources, energy and climate change, nature conservation and parks, minerals, industrial pollution and public health, population policies and their relationship to the environment. Designate an article for the rest of the class to read on that topic and make a short presentation in class in week 12. Due in class, week 11.

3c. Write a short paper (5-7 pages) analyzing how prospects for China’s environmental sustainability in the post-Mao period are helped or hindered by one or more of the following: political institutions, the emerging civil society and non-governmental organizations, interaction with the international community, and economic reform. Draw on the materials and theoretical frameworks covered in this class. Make a brief presentation of your paper to the class. Due in week 13.

Texts

Judith Shapiro, 2001. Mao’s War Against Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robert Louis Edmonds, ed., 2000. Managing the Chinese Environment. Oxford : Oxford University Press. (Previously published as a special issue of The China Quarterly: no.156, December 1998. Available online through the UC Berkeley libraries and http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb.)

A course reader containing the additional required readings is available at Replica Copy, 2140 Oxford Street, Berkeley, (510) 549-9991.

Recommended monographs and articles are on reserve at Moffitt Library; check the Gladis online catalog for reserves by searching for ASIS 160. Additional materials that may be helpful for your assignments on are on reserve at the Center for Chinese Studies Library (CCSL), basement of 2223 Fulton Street.

Week 2. Overview of China's environment

Required

Mark Elvin, “The Environmental Legacy of Imperial China,” China Quarterly 156, pp.733-756.

Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature, introduction, chapter 1 on Population and Dams

Vaclav Smil. 1993. China’s Environmental Crisis: An Inquiry into the Limits of National Development. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Preface, “China’s Environment,” pp.xv-xix, and Chapter 6, “Living within the limits,” pp.190-204.

Rozelle, Huang and Zhang. “Poverty, population and environmental degradation in China.” Food Policy Volume 22, Number 3, June 1997, pp. 229-253.

Related Readings

McNeill, J.R. "China's Environmental History in World Perspective," in Mark Elvin, ed., Sediments of Time.

Edmonds, Richard Louis. September 1999. "The Environment in the People's Republic of China 50 years on." The China Quarterly 159, pp. 640-650.

Smil, Vaclav. "China's Environment: Resilient Myths and Contradictory Realities," in Landscapes and Communities on the Pacific Rim.

G. William Skinner, “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History.” Journal of Asian Studies v.44 n.2 (February 1985), pp. 271-292.

Edmonds, Richard Louis. 1994. Patterns of China’s Lost Harmony - A Survey of the Country’s Environmental Degradation and Protection. Chapter 1 "The Nature of Environmental Problems in China,"

Timothy C. Weiskel, 1998. Bibliography on Energy and Environment in China. Harvard University Committee on Environment. http://ecoethics.net/bib/1997/otcr-001.htm.

Working Group on Environment in U.S.-China Relations, 2001. “Bibliography” in China Environment Series, issue 4. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. http://ecsp.si.edu/PDF/CES4-bibliography.pdf.

Week 3. Theoretical Frameworks

Required

Lele, Sharachchandra. 1991. "Sustainable Development: A Critical Review." World Development. Vol. 19. No. 6, pp. 607-621. [sustainable development]

Peet, Richard and Michael Watts. 1996. Chapter 1, "Liberation ecology, development, sustainability and the environment in an age of market triumphalism" in Liberation ecologies [political ecology]

Margaret A. McKean 1998. “The role of common property regimes in managing common-pool resources in China today.” Chapter 3 in Vermeer, Pieke, and Chong, ed.s, Cooperative and Collective in China’s Rural Development: Between State and Private Interests. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe). E-Book available via UCB netLibrary. [property]

Williams, Dee Mack. Sept 2000. "Representations of Nature on the Mongolian Steppe: An Investigation of Scientific Knowledge Construction" American Anthropologist v102, n3:503. [discourse/the construction of scientific knowledge ]

Class discussion

Web page: State Environmental Protection Agency. 2000. Report on the State of the Environment in China. Beijing: SEPA. http://www.zhb.gov.cn/english/SOE/soechina2000/index.htm.

Related Readings

James Scott, 1988 Chapter 1. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press. [landscape/states and territories]

Alfred Schmidt, 1971. The Concept of Nature in Marx. Trans. Ben Fowkes. (London: New Left Books).

Rhoads Murphey, “Man and Nature in China.” Modern Asian Studies v.1 n.4 (1967), pp.313-333.

Redclift, Michael (ed.) 2000. Sustainability: life chances and livelihoods. New

York: Routledge.

Redclift, Michael and Ted Benton (eds) 1994. Social theory and the global environment.

New York: Routledge.

Vandergeest, Peter and Nancy Lee Peluso. 1995. "Territorialization and state power

in Thailand." Theory and Society. Volume 24 N3: 385-426

Grindle, Merilee, ed., 1980. Politics and Policy Implementation in the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Week 4. Historical and Cultural Legacies

Required

Yi-fu Tuan, “Discrepancies between environmental attitude and behavior: examples from Europe and China,” Canadian Geographer v.12 n.3 (1968)

Weller, Robert P. and Peter K. Bol. "From Heaven-and-Earth to Nature: Chinese Concepts of the Environment and their influence on policy implementation," in Michael B. McElroy, Chris P. Nielsen, and Peter Lydon, ed.s, Energizing China. Cambridge: Harvard University Committee on Environment, 1998.

Huber, Toni and Poul Pedersen. "Meterological Knowledge and Environmental Ideas in Traditional and Modern Societies: The Case of Tibet," in Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute (NS)3: 577-598. Also “Comment: Ecological knowledge in Tibet” by Martin A. Mills and response by Huber and Pederson.

Williams, Dee Mack. August 1996 "The Barbed Walls of China - A Contemporary grassland drama." Journal of Asian Studies. Volume 55, N. 665-691.

Recommended

Lynn White, Jr., “Historical roots of our ecologic crisis,” Science v.155 (March 10, 1967)

Bruun, Ole 1996. “The Fengshui Resurgence in China: Conflicting Cosmologies between State and Peasantry.” The China Journal 36 (July): 47-65.

Related Readings

Karl A. Wittfogel. Agriculture: a key to the understanding of Chinese society, past and present. (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1970). 20pp.

Linda Walton, “Southern Sung Academies and the Construction of Sacred Space” in W. Yeh, ed., Landscape, Culture, and Power in Chinese Society.

Santangelo, Paolo. "Ecologism versus Moralism: Conceptions of Nature in Some Literary Texts of Ming-Qing Times," in Mark Elvin, Sediments of Time.

Murphy, Rhoads. "Asian Perceptions of and Behavior Toward the Natural Environment," in Landscapes and Communities on the Pacific Rim. pp. 35-57.

Hou Wenhui, “Reflections on Chinese Traditional Views of Nature.” Environmental History v.2 n.4 (October 1997), pp.482-492.

Yang, Xiaoshan 2000. "Idealizing Wilderness in Medieval Chinese Poetry," in Landscapes and Communities on the Pacific Rim: Cultural Perspectives from Asia to the Pacific Northwest, Karen Gaul and Jackie Hiltz (eds) an East Gate Book, pp. 91-107.

Maurice Freedman 1979 [1968], “Geomancy.” in G. William Skinner, ed., The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, pp.313-33. Stanford: SUP.

Komito, David Ross. 1992. "Eco-Boddhicitta and Artful Conduct" The Tibet Journal.

pp. 45-51. New Delhi.

Huber, Toni. 1991. "Traditional Environmental Protectionism in Tibet Reconsidered." The Tibet

Journal. pp. 63-77. New Delhi.

King, Franklin Hiram. 1948. Farmers of forty centuries; or, Permanent agriculture in China, Korea and Japan

Williams, Dee Mack. June 1997. "Patchwork, pastoralists, and perception: dine sand as a valued

resource among herders of inner Mongolia." Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary

Journal v25, n2 (June, 1997):297 (21 pages)

Week 5. New Environmental Histories

Required

Select ONE of following books (available on reserve):

K. Pomeranz, 2000. The great divergence : Europe, China, and the making of the modern world economy. The Princeton economic history of the Western world (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.).

Nicholas K. Menzies, 1994. Forest and Land Management in Imperial China. Ipswitch: St. Martin’s Press.

R. Keith Schoppa, 1989. Xiang Lake: nine centuries of Chinese life. (New Haven: Yale University Press).

Robert B. Marks, 1998. Tigers, rice, silk, and silt : environment and economy in late imperial south China. (Cambridge, UK: CUP).

Peter Perdue, 1987. Exhausting the Earth: Hunan 1500-1850. (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies and Harvard University Press).

T. M. Buoye, 2000. Manslaughter, markets, and moral economy : violent disputes over property rights in eighteenth century China. Cambridge studies in Chinese history, literature, and institutions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York).

Related Readings

Elvin, Mark. "Three thousand years of unsustainable growth: China's environment from archaic times to the present," East Asian History, Vol. 6 (1993).

Edmonds, Richard Louis. 1994. Patterns of China’s Lost Harmony - A Survey of the Country’s Environmental Degradation and Protection. New York: Routledge. Chapter 2 "Environmental Degradation in China's Past."

Osborne, Anne. "Highlands and Lowland: Economic and Ecological Interactions in the Lower Yangzi Region under the Qing," in Mark Elvin, Sediments of Time.

Bozhong, Li., "Changes in Climate, land, and Human Efforts: The production of wet-field Rice in Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing dynasties," in Mark Elvin, Sediments of Time.

Vermeer, Eduard B. "Population and Ecology along the Frontier in Qing China," in Mark Elvin, ed., Sediments of Time

Mark Elvin, and Liu Ts'ui -jung (eds).1998. Sediments of time : environment and society in Chinese history / Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University

Week 6. Institutions and implementation in the PRC

Required

Kenneth Lieberthal, 1997. “China’s Governing System and its Impact on Environmental Policy Implementation.” China Environment Series, Woodrow Wilson International Center [http://www.ecsp.si.edu].

Abigail Jahiel, “Organization of Environmental Protection in China,” CQ 156, pp.757-787.

Michael Palmer. "Environmental Regulation in the People's Republic of China: The Face of Domestic Law," CQ 156, pp.788-808.

Peter Ho. March 2000. "The Clash over State and Collective Property: The Making of the Rangeland Law." The China Quarterly 161, pp. 240-263.

Related Readings

Lester Ross, 1988. Environmental Policy in China. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Chapter 1: Strategies for Implementation.

Lieberthal, Kenneth and Michael Oksenberg,1988. Policy Making in China: leaders, structures and processes. . Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press,

Lieberthal, Kenneth, 1992. Bureaucracy, Politics, And Decision Making In Post-Mao China. Berkeley: University of California Press. eBook available via UCB netLibrary. Lester Ross, 1988. Environmental Policy in China. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Chapter 1: Strategies for Implementation.

Ma Xiaoying and Ortolano, Leonard, 2000. Environmental regulation in China : institutions, enforcement, and compliance. (Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield).

Barbara J. Sinkule and Leonard Ortolano, 1995. Implementing Environmental Policy in China. (Westport, CT: Praeger).

Hanchen, Wang and Liu Bingjiang. 1997 "Policymaking for Environmental Protection in China," In, Energizing China: Reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Alford William P. and Yuanyuan Shen. "Limits of the Law in Addressing China's Environmental Dilemma," in Energizing China, pp. 431-473.

Edmonds, Richard Louis. Patterns of China's Lost Harmony. Chapter 10 Environmental Policy- Past, Present and Future.

Panayotou, Theodore. "The effectiveness and efficiency of environmental policy in China." in Energizing China, pp. 431-473.

Week 7. Forestry I (Historical)

Required

John W. Bruce and Louise Fortmann, 1988. “Why Land Tenure and Trees Matter: Some Fuel for Thought.” In Louise Fortmann and John W. Bruce, ed.s, Whose Trees? Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry. Boulder: Westview Press. Pp. 1-9.

Menzies, Nicholas. 1988. “A Survey of Customary Law and Control Over Trees and Wildlands in China.” In Louise Fortmann and John W. Bruce, ed.s, Whose Trees? Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry. Boulder: Westview Press. Pp. 51-62.

Elisabeth Grinspoon, 2002. Socialist Wasteland Auctions: Privatizing Collective Forest Land in China’s Economic Transition. Ph.D. dissertation, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley. Chapter 2, “Forest Property Rights and Rural Structure.”

Elena Songster, 2001. “Cultivating the Nation in the Nursery: Fujian Timber Trade and State Afforestation in Republican China.” Unpublished ms., Department of History, UC San Diego.

Janet Sturgeon, forthcoming. Practices on the Periphery: Landscape Plasticity and Border Politics at the Crossroads of China, Thailand, and Burma. Chapter 5, “Land Use under Principalities and Border Chiefs," and Chapter 6, "Livelihoods under Modernizing Nation-States" [focus on sections related to forestry in Xishuangbanna].

Recommended

Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature, chapter 2, “Deforestation, Famine, and Utopian Urgency,” especially pages 80-86.

Ross, Lester, 1988. Environmental Policy in China. Chapter 2, Forest Policy.

Related Readings

(see under week 8)

Week 8. Forestry II (current policy challenges)

Required

Yin, RS. December 1998 " Forestry and the environment in China: the current situation and strategic choices." World Development. V. 26 N. 12:2153-2167.

Chen Zhimin, 1988. “Stabilize Wildland Rights and Consolidate the Responsibility System.” Trans. N. Menzies. In Louise Fortmann and John W. Bruce, ed.s, Whose Trees? Proprietary Dimensons of Forestry. Boulder: Westview Press. Pp. 137-138.

Zhang, Peichang, Guofan Shao, Guang Zhao, Dennis C. Le Master, George R. Parker, John B. Dunning Jr., Qinglin Li. "China's Forest Policy for the 21^st Century," Science 23 June 2000, 288 pp. 2135-2136. and Ming Xu, Ye Qi, and Peng Gong, “Reply to Zhang et al.,” Science 289: 2049 -2050. Available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/288/5474/2135.

Menzies, Nicholas K., and Nancy Lee Peluso. 1991. "Rights of Access to Upland Forest Resources in Southwest China." Journal of World Forest Resource Management 6:1-20.

Emily Yeh March 2000. "Forest claims, conflicts and commodification: The political ecology of Tibetan mushroom-harvesting villages in Yunnan Province, China." China Quarterly N161:264-278.

Recommended

Harkness, James. December 1998. “Recent trends in forestry and conservation of biodiversity in China.” The China Quarterly. No.156:911-934.

Winkler, Daniel. 1998. “Deforestation in Eastern Tibet: Human Impact Past and Present” in Graham Clarke (ed.) Development, Society, and Environment in Tibet. Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wisenschaften.

Related Readings

Albers, HJ, Scott Rozelle, G. Li 1998. "China's forest under economic reform: timber supplies,

environmental protection and rural resource access." Contemporary Economic Policy.

16(1)22-33.

Richardson, S.D. 1990. Forests and Forestry in China: changing patterns of resource developmentWashington, D.C. : Island Press, especially: pp. 14-44 (economic background, land use and environment); chapter 3(the forest economy, pp. 87-125); and chapter 5 (adminstration, policy and law, pp. 159-190)

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 1982. “Policy and Planning.” Chapter 4 in Forestry in China. FAO forestry paper 35. Rome: FAO. Pp.105-115, 121.

Richardson, S.D. 1998. “The Forest Economy of Tibet.” Commonwealth Forestry

Review 76(3): 253-263.

Vaclav Smil. 1993. “Existential Necessities: Forests, Grasslands, Wetlands.” Chapter 2, section 3 in China’s Environmental Crisis: An Inquiry into the Limits of National Development. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Pp. 59-66.

“China’s Forest Resources in 2000” (1987). Translated by Joint Publications Research Service.

Li, Chunyang. November 1998. “Forest Resources and Management in China: Problems and Proposals”. Ambio. Voume 7, No. 7, pp. 578-579.

Swope, Lindsay. 1995. Factors Influencing Rates of Deforestation in Lijaing County, Yunnan Province China. Master's thesis, University of California, Davis.

Tapp, N. 1996. "Social Aspects of China Fir Plantations in China". Commonwealth Forestry Review 75 (4):302-308.

Winkler, Daniel. 1996. “Forests, Forest Economy and Deforestation in the Tibetan Prefectures of West Sichuan” Commonwealth Forestry Review 75(4) pp. 296-301.

Winkler, Daniel. 1999. "Forest use and implications of the 1998 logging ban in the Tibetan

Prefecture of Sichuan, China." Paper for the International Conference on Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development. October 1999. Kunming, China.

Zuo, Ting. nd “Perspective from Liangshan Daohu to Sihuang Paimai: Institutional Weaknesses of Forest Land Management Policies in the Mountainous Yunnan, China”. Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming, China.

Week 9. Cropland

Required

Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature, chapter 3 on agriculture

Joshua Muldavin. 1998. Agrarian change in contemporary rural China. In Ivan Szelenyi, ed., Privatizing the Land: Rural Political Economy in Post-Communist Societies. London: Routledge. Pp. 92-124.

Ash and Edmonds, “China’s Land Resources, Environment, and Agricultural Production,” CQ 156

Paarlberg, Robert L. 1997. "Feeding China: a confident view." Food Policy. Vol 22 No. 3 pp. 269-279.

Recommended

Lester Brown, 1995. Who Will Feed China? ? : wake-up call for a small planet New York:

W.W. Norton & Co.

Related Readings

Loren Brandt, Jikun Huang, Guo Li and Scott Rozelle, 2002. “Land Rights in China: Facts Fictions and Issues.” China Journal 47 (January).

Christiansen, F. “An analysis of recent developments in China’s land legislation: some new trends in Chinese land ownership and land use.” China Information v.1 n.3 (Winter 1986-87).

Rosegrant, Mark, Scott Rozelle, and Roberta V. Gerpacio (guest editors) Food Policy. June 1997. Special Issue: "China and the World food economy" Volume 22 Number 3

George P. Brown. 1995. Arable land loss in rural China: policy and implementation in Jiangsu province. Asian Survey 35, n.10 (October):922-41.

Chao Kuo-chün. “Agrarian Reform—Land Redistribution,” section II in Agrarian Policies of Mainland China: A Documentary Study (1949-1956). (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957).

Smil, Vaclav. June 1999. "China's Agricultural Land." The China Quarterly 162, pp. 414-429.

Hu, W. July 1997. "Household land tenure reform in China: Its impact on farming land use and agro-environment." Land Use Policy V14 N3:175-186.

Week 10. Grasslands

Required:

Ho, Peter. Rangeland Degradation in North China Revisited? A Preliminary Statistical

Analysis to Validate Non-Equilibrium Range Ecology. Journal of Development Studies

v37, n3 (Feb, 2001):99.

Ho, Peter, 2000. "China's Rangelands under Stress: A Comparative Study of Pasture Commons in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region." Development and Change 31:385-412.

Banks, T. Property rights and the environment in pastoral China: Evidence from the field. Development And Change, 2001 SEP, V32 N4:717-740.

Williams, Dee Mack. 1996 "Grassland Enclosures: Catalyst of Land Degradation in Inner Mongolia. Human Organization 55 (3):307-312.

Recommended

Ellis, et al. 1992. Chapter 1 "The grazinglands of Northern China: Ecology, society and land use," pp. 9-39; and chapter 14 "Key issues in grassland studies," pp. 193-194. Grasslands and Grassland Sciences in Northern China. Washington DC: Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China.

Longworth, John W. and Gregory J. Williamson. 1993. China's Pastoral Region: Sheep and Wool, Minority Nationalities, Rangeland Degradation and Sustainable Development. Canberra, Australia: CAB International.

Related Readings

Clarke, Graham E. 1987. “China’s Reforms of Tibet and their Effect on Pastoralism,” IDS Discussion Paper No. 237. Brighton, UK.

Goldstein, Melvyn C., and Cynthia M. Beall. 1991. "Change and Continuity in Nomadic Pastoralism on the Western Tibetan Plateau". Nomadic Peoples 28 (1991):105-122.

Ho, Peter. January 1996. "Ownership and Control in Chinese Rangeland Management since Mao: The Case of Free-Riding in Ningxia". London: Overseas Development Institute.

Levine, Nancy E. 1998. “From Nomads to Ranchers: Managing Pasture among Ethnic Tibetans in Sichuan” in Graham Clarke (ed.) Development, Society, and Environment in Tibet. Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wisenschaften.

Levine, Nancy E. 1999. “Cattle and the Cash Economy: Responses to Change among Tibetan Pastoralists in Sichuan, China,” Human Organization, Vol. 58(2):161-172.

Miller, Daniel J. 1994. “Herds on the Move – Winds of Change among Pastoralists in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau.” Discussion Paper Series No. MNR 95/2. Kathmandu, Nepal: ICIMOD.

Miller, Daniel J. 1996. “New Perspectives on Range Management & Pastoralism & Their Implications for HKH-Tibetan Plateau Rangelands.” ICIMOD:7-12.

Thwaites, Rik, Terry de Lacy, Li Yong Hong, and Liu Xian Hua. 1998. “Property Rights, Social Change, and Grassland Degradation in Xilingol Biosphere Reserve, Inner Mongolia, China”. Society and Natural Resources 11:319-338.

Williams, Dee Mack. The desert discourse of modern China. (desert expansion in North China)

Modern China v23, n3 (July, 1997):328 (28 pages).

Wu, Ning. 1996. “Rangeland Resources and Condition in Western Sichuan.” ICIMOD, pp. 23-40.

Wu, Ning and Camille Richard. 1999. "The Privatization process of rangeland and its impacts on pastoral dynamics in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya: The Case of Western Sichuan, China," in People and Rangelands Building the Future, Proceedings of the VI International Rangeland Congress.

______________________________________________________________________________

Week 11. Water Resources and Hydropower

Required

Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature, chapter 1 on Population and Dams [review Dams section from week 2].

James E. Nickum "Is China Living on the Water Margin?" China Quarterly 156.

Liu Changming. "Environmental issues and the South-North Water Transfer Scheme." CQ 156.

Selected short articles from World Rivers Review. Vol. 12, no. 6 (December 1997).

Dai Qing, 1998. “The Three Gorges Project.” In The river dragon has come! : the three gorges dam and the fate of China'sYangtze River and its people. Compiled by Dai Qing ; edited by John G. Thibodeau and Philip B. Williams. (Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe).

Video (to be shown in class): "Great Wall across the Yangzi” (2000, 60 min.)

Recommended

Baruch Boxer, 1997. “China’s Water Problems in the Context of U.S.-China Relations.” China Environment Series (Fall), Woodrow Wilson International Center [www.ecsp.si.edu].

Crescencia Maurer, Changhua Wu, Yi Wang, and Shouzheng Xue, 1997. “Water Pollution and Human Health in China. China Environment Series (Fall), Woodrow Wilson International Center [www.ecsp.si.edu].

Related Readings

Edmonds, Richard Louis. Patterns of China's Lost Harmony. Chapters 5 & 6: "Desertification,

Grassland Degradation, Water Shortages and Salinization-Alkalisation," and "Water,

Soil, and Solid Waste Pollution."

Lieberthal and Oksenberg, Policy Making in China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Chapter 6, “The Three Gorges Dam Project.”

Special issue of Chinese Environment and Development on water. Vol 5, No.2 (1994).

Week 13. Pressures on the state: civil society, resistance, and international politics

Required

Shapiro, Mao’s War on Nature, chapter 5 (“Legacy”).

Jun Jing, 2000. "Environmental Protests in rural China," in Elizabeth Perry and Mark Selden, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. New York: Routledge, pp. 143-160.

Knup, Elizabeth. 1997. "Environmental NGO's in China: An Overview." China Environment Series (Fall), Woodrow Wilson International Center [www.ecsp.si.edu ].

Young, Nick. Chinabrief. “A million flowers bloom; one is weeded out”(March 2000); “New rules for the nonprofit sector”(February, 1999); “International NGOs find their own space”(Jan-Feb 1998). Also "Searching for civil society". introduction to 250 Chinese NGOs: Civil Society in the Making.

Lester Ross, “Environmental Protection, Domestic Policy Trends, Patterns of Participation in Regimes and Compliance with International Norms,” CQ 156

Li Daqun, 1994. “New Diplomatic Endeavors Concerning World Environment.” Guoji wenti yanjiu (International Studies) 4. Trans. M. Henderson. http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~mhenders/home/guojiyanjiu.html.

Web Page: The World Bank. 1997. Clear Water, Blue Skies: China’s Environment in the New Century. Washington DC: The World Bank. September. (Summary and Chapter 1: Growth and China’s Environment) http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/china/clrwt-sum.htm. (To be discussed in class).

Recommended

A.I. Johnston, “China and International Environmental Institutions: A decision rule analysis,” in Michael B. McElroy, Chris P. Nielsen, and Peter Lydon, ed.s, Energizing China. Cambridge: Harvard University Committee on Environment, 1998.

Assignments

Labor Day holiday

Veterans’ Day holiday

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Week 11. Water Resources and Hydropower