Has China Been Green? (Part One)

As promised at the end of my last (Civil War) history post, I am continuing my pattern of alternating topics. Time for another environmental subject! This one is about China's modern environmental policies and issues; the second part will cover a short but diverse set of Chinese animal species, in order to understand how the shifts in policy have impacted specific animals. After this first part, I promise to return to the story of Francis Harris and his (previously unpublished) experiences as a Union soldier (thanks again to Jessica Harris, and to all of you readers for your enthusiasm about the first installment!).

It seems that just about every other news story these days involves China in some fashion. This is hardly surprising, if only because of China’s size and global importance. It’s tied for third in land area (with the U.S.), and, for a very long time (it’s not possible to measure accurately), has had the world’s largest population, now over 1.4 billion (though it looks as if India will surpass it later this year!). Economically, the U.S. is the world’s largest economy, and China ranks second.

There are two major themes to the current U.S. media coverage of China. The first involves the greatest crisis of our times: climate change. Since 2006, China has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, largely due to its heavy consumption of coal for its energy, as well as to the sheer size of its economy. Therefore any meaningful attempt to control the emissions that are so clearly harming the planet must necessarily involve an historic partnership between the two top emitters, China and the United States: one that involves serious, immediate, comprehensive and long-term commitments for reduction by the governments (and businesses) of both nations.

The other theme would seem to contradict all of the above. On one side, China, an authoritarian one-party state, advertises itself to the world as a model of political and economic success, and increasingly as a military superpower. On the other side, with the United States representing itself as the defender of democracy, as well as being the reigning military superpower, rivalry, rather than partnership, now seems to be the nature of the relationship. Not so long ago both countries aimed for a different relationship, a globally important economic bond: China as being the greatest manufacturing nation, and the U.S. as the greatest consumer of its products. Now there is open criticism of each government by the other, and, on the American side, various attempts to constrain China as an economic competitor. Any cooperation for controlling climate change has lapsed, at least for now.

That’s the current context in a nutshell. As I have followed these themes in the news, the issue that has occurred to me to investigate is the following: what environmental policies has China had, since the Communist takeover (the start of the People’s Republic) in 1949? Although the American park system, a source of national pride as the world’s oldest, dates back to Yellowstone in 1872, our environmental movement (and legislation) is much more modern- dating to the 1970’s, a century later. During the period of Chinese history from 1949 to today, how has it been treating its ecosystems, by comparison? Specifically, what has been happening to China’s wildlife?

And that wildlife is of global importance. China is one of the most biodiverse of all nations. Part of the reason, again, is its size. From north to south, it stretches from the cold Gobi desert and (just below Siberia) the edges of the vast subarctic boreal forest (comparable to central Alaska and Canada), down through a temperate zone similar to the eastern U.S., and ending in tropical rainforest in the far south and southwest. In its far west is another vast desert, in the province of Xinjiang, and the world’s largest and highest plateau, Tibet. It contains two of the largest and longest river systems in Asia (the Yellow in the north, and the Yangtze in the south). And it has the world’s 10th longest coastline (including two large parts of the Pacific, the Yellow and South China Seas). In consequence of having so much space and so many kinds of habitats, China ranks third in the world in mammal species, eighth in its number of bird species (it takes up a large section of one of the world’s most important migratory flyways), seventh in reptiles, and seventh in amphibians. One-sixth of its mammals and two-thirds of its amphibians are endemic, that is to say they are found nowhere else. While China has made real strides very recently toward protection of its species, much of this diversity is under serious threat: over 1,000 species are vulnerable or endangered; around 90% of its grasslands and 53% of its coastal wetlands are degraded, while 80% of its coral reefs are gone, and likewise 73% of the mangrove forests that used to protect its coastline. Half of the world’s ocean plastic pollution is due to the litter floating out to sea from just one Chinese river, the Yangtze.

A couple quick clarifications. As mentioned, and especially given China’s extraordinarily long (and documented) history, I’m setting a time limit (only covering from 1949 to the present). One species I won’t be covering in the second part is that best-known of all Chinese wild animals: the giant panda! Not because it isn’t the very definition of a “charismatic species” (it is high on the cuteness scale!), but because it is already so well known around the world (for the panda story, including how pandas have become a tool of Chinese diplomacy, I refer you to Elena Songster’s book, “Panda Nation”). There is one other connection between China and wildlife that I will touch on (briefly, in the second post): the theory (competing with the “lab origin” theory) that the COVID epidemic originated from the wildlife market in the city of Wuhan (China is also the world’s biggest trader, legal and otherwise, of wildlife for consumption and body parts). On to the first topic!

Typical Great Leap Forward Poster (1958-1961)

Phase One: China’s Environment in the Mao Years (1949-1976):

By the time the Communists had won the civil war with the Nationalists (who fled to the large nearby island of Taiwan), and their leader, Mao Zedong, declared the People’s Republic in 1949, China’s people had gone through one of the most destructive periods in the country’s long history, including the deaths of over 50 million during the Japanese invasion, a long version of the global Second World War (1937-1945). Mao’s armies had been fighting, first the Nationalists, then the Japanese, then the Nationalists again, since the late 1920’s. Mao’s priority was certainly not environmental issues, but rather a radical, wholesale, and violent reshaping of the economy (starting with confiscation of private lands and redistribution to the peasants, now to be organized in communes and collective farms). Once that was carried out, and after a bloody intervention (and stalemate) in the Korean War, against the U.S., South Korea, and their United Nations allies (1950-1953), Mao’s attention turned to industrial competition on the world stage, both with the capitalist nations and with the other great Communist nation, the Soviet Union. The result was the first policy that would have dramatic environmental effects: the disastrous “Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961).

Mao’s goal, ruthlessly enforced against any perceived opposition, was nothing less than to catch up to the much richer Western nations, and specifically to outdo Britain’s steel production- in 15 years! He also wanted to see a “great leap” in agricultural production. His method was, again ruthlessly, to make use of China’s vast supply of cheap labor. Rather than speeding industrialization of cities, the rural peasantry were told to build, by hand, as many dams (including on China’s largest rivers) and backyard iron furnaces (600,000!) as possible. To further the agricultural goal (in the name of “hygiene”), he added the Four Pests Campaign: to wipe out mosquitoes (to end malaria); flies; rodents (seen as carriers of plague); and especially sparrows (blamed for consuming grain and fruit). The last was so successful that the Eurasian house sparrow, once one of the most common birds, was nearly driven to extinction.

Chinese & dead sparrows- Four Pests Campaign- "Refuge in the Embassy", wildercities.com

The results were horrific. The peasantry were pulled, en masse, away from their normal subsistence activities, to be worked to exhaustion on tasks that brought no significant benefit. One major example was the Sanmenxia Dam, on China’s second largest river, the Yellow. The river’s name came from the color of its sediment; in eroding the soft loess soil upstream, it carried more sediment than any other river in the world. Against all scientific advice (the chief engineer was sent to a labor camp for objecting!), Mao’s government decided to make the river literally run clear, by drafting thousands to build the dam. When finished in 1960, it was hailed as a marvel, and did (briefly) generate power and prevent flooding. But all of that sediment built up rapidly in the reservoir, to the point that the dam was effectively clogged by mud in just two years! The only readily available fuel for all those iron furnaces was wood, which resulted in rapid and immense deforestation (what historian Robert Marks calls the “Great Cutting No. 1”). Yet almost all of the backyard iron produced was, like the dam projects, useless. The most biodiverse forest, the rainforest in Yunnan in the far south, was heavily damaged by long-term government encouragement of clear-cutting for rubber plantations. But the destruction of the sparrows was an outright catastrophe. It turned out that their chief food was not grain, but insects, including locusts. Without their predators, the locusts multiplied, and devastated what few crops farmers had been able to plant. The result was a colossal famine, one in which, by 1961, at least 30 million Chinese starved to death. The government, in desperation, even tried importing sparrows from the Soviet Union!

Amazingly, after being pushed out of supreme power for a few years after the Great Leap, Mao (by maneuvers too complex to summarize here) was able to regain it by the mid-1960’s. He used that power to start the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), effectively pitting the young against anything, and anyone “old,” and also sending urban youth en masse into the countryside, to participate in agricultural construction projects (the slogan was “take grain as the key link”, promoting fertilizer and pesticide use and a shift to monoculture crops such as wheat). A small village, Dazhai in Shanxi, was singled out as a role model for its irrigation and terracing. Once again peasants were directed to follow Dazhai’s example, to “move mountains” by hand, working through the winter and even by night, and again tearing up the landscape (including “Great Cutting No. 2”) with little economic gain. Entire new cities and factories were built far inland, in areas that had been sparsely populated (and hence were wildlife habitat), as part of the “Third Front” move, intended to move people and industries to locations far from possible nuclear attack.

In 1972, at the same time as Mao made the first tentative move away from outright hostility to the capitalist West (by hosting President Nixon), China’s government also made its first tentative moves in an environmental direction (soon after Nixon’s creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). It sent a delegation to a UN Conference on the Human Environment, and created the nucleus of what would become its own environmental protection agency.

But, a year before Mao’s death in 1976, there was still one more tragedy that resulted from his policies. In Aug. 1975, Typhoon Nina (what in the Americas would be called a hurricane) dropped record rainfall. No less than 62 dams, most hastily and poorly constructed, failed as a result, displacing almost 11 million and flooding 30 cities. The worst was the collapse of the large Banqiao Dam, which sent a wall of water 20 feet high racing downstream through a densely populated area. The resulting death toll was at least 26,000, and could be as high as 240,000! As with all of the negative events I’ve mentioned, you won’t find this dam failure as a topic of public discussion in today’s China.

Phase Two: China’s Environment in the Reform Years (1978 to present):

This long period can be conveniently divided into two parts: the first, 1978 to 1998, being one of the most dramatic economic growth for any nation in history. The second, from then to now, can be characterized, in environmental terms, as a reckoning with consequences from the first one!

By 1978, Deng Xiaoping had emerged as the next national leader. He inherited a country that was politically isolated from the international community, demoralized by the upheavals under Mao, and technologically backward. It also had an unsustainably high birthrate (by now China was reaching the 1 billion mark, having added almost 400 million in under 30 years!), which only worsened its poverty. Deng immediately instituted sweeping changes, most fundamentally in embracing a “socialist market economy” that for the first time opened up opportunities for private businesses and entrepreneurs. The priority given under Mao to heavy industries such as steel was abandoned, in favor of light manufacturing and consumer products (the era of the global label “Made in China”). Deng also opened up the economy to foreign investment, with foreign companies setting up subsidiaries and bringing in many new jobs. The rural communes and collective farms were also dissolved, and provincial and local governments were allowed some decision-making power for the first time. The outcome was spectacular economic growth, averaging 10% a year; in the next two decades 800 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty! Finally, Deng in 1979 imposed a harsh “one-child policy,” at the beginning including forced sterilizations and abortions, to bring the birthrate under control (enforced for the next 35 years). For the first time in modern times, China, though still per capita poorer than Western nations, developed a large middle class with money to spend, as well as its own set of millionaires and billionaires. The boom only accelerated after 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization.

The downside of all this economic growth, not surprisingly, was another massive blow to the health of the nation’s ecosystems. That included a third wave of deforestation (“Great Cutting No. 3”), this time to benefit private citizens and to make space for unprecedented construction and urbanization. The Gezhouba Dam inflicted major harm on the Yangtze River, blocking the migration of fish upstream, and nearly eliminating the spawning of the biggest species, the unique paddlefish and sturgeon. But its impact was dwarfed by the start of construction of the Three Gorges Dam (1994-2008) further up the Yangtze, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam. Simply clearing the way for its reservoir involved moving out over 1 million people. Water and air pollution, already severe, got much worse, as did chemical contamination of the soil itself, as the chemical industries dumped their waste with impunity, and many Chinese began shifting from bicycles to cars. Related deaths and illnesses, such as lung cancer and mercury and lead poisoning, surged as a result (to 750,000 deaths a year!).

Trash built up behind Three Gorges Dam (Reuters, 8/3/2010)

All of this was happening while the government seemed on the surface to be more environmentally conscious than ever: passing a sweeping Environmental Protection Law in 1979, and writing environmental protection into the constitution. Other laws included a Basic Forest Law and a Wildlife Protection Law, with a list of protected species (including, of course, the giant panda). The largest tree planting project in world history was begun- the Three Norths Shelter Project or so-called “Great Green Wall.” This was done in the far north, along the edge of the expanding Gobi Desert, and involved planting a belt of trees for over 3,000 miles. The number of nature reserves soared during this period. But far too many were “paper reserves”; actual enforcement was often very weak, as local authorities felt little reason to stop logging and poaching. The Green Wall likewise looked very impressive from the air, and many trees were indeed planted, but too often as a monoculture of species unsuited to the local conditions; only 15% of the trees are estimated to have survived. The dust storms that have been sweeping in from the Gobi to hit Beijing, rather than declining, have gotten worse.

Map of approximate area of Green Wall mass reforestation- from quora.com

The environmental year of reckoning was 1998. The nation’s forest cover was down to just 14%. Starting in June, large areas of the country experienced double or triple normal rainfall, and major rivers, including the largest of all, the Yangtze, burst their banks in the worst flooding in 40 years, lasting throughout the summer. Fifteen million were made homeless, and 180 million were affected; over 4,700 died. It became all too clear that the damage was made much worse by the rampant logging that had just happened at the headwaters, especially of the Yangtze.

At last the government did take real action, starting with a short-term ban on logging altogether, followed by a Forestry Law that for the first time set specific quotas on the numbers that could be logged of specific species. It also instituted an extraordinary program, known as “Grain for Green,” to tackle the huge issue of the erosion of steep slopes by deforestation of the highlands. Once again a massive rural labor force was put to work, terracing, building reservoirs, and penning up the livestock which had been overgrazing the slopes. This time, though, there were important differences from the past. Farmers were compensated for their labor, including subsidies for planting trees, and natural vegetation was encouraged in the restoration process. The program was successful enough that it has been renewed up to the present. And two large and important wildlife sanctuaries, Chang Tang in remotest Tibet, and Sanjiangyuan (“Three-Rivers-Headwaters”, covering the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong), this time with anti-poaching patrols. Forest cover has now increased (to over 22%).

By 2005, there were signs of a genuine grass-roots environmental movement (pioneered by the Friends of Nature, founded by young academics in 1994), working both inside the system and (to some extent) outside it. For the first time, nonprofit organizations were allowed to create their own reserves (on the pattern of the Nature Conservancy in the U.S.). There were also 60,000 “public disturbances,” in which citizens protested air and water pollution at the local level. The most tangible victory came when yet another dam even further up the Yangtze (which would have encroached on a reserve), in Tiger Leaping Gorge, was cancelled due to popular opposition.

On to the present day! In Nov. 2012, Xi Jinping became the top national and Party leader. Since then, he has consolidated and centralized personal power to a degree not seen since Mao himself, removing all restrictions and time limits on his authority.

So what are the environmental issues, both existing and developing, that he has faced from 2012 to today, and what has he done about them?

First- what did he inherit? A massive and resource-hungry economy, heavily reliant on fossil fuels and (increasingly) on imported raw materials from across the globe, and one that dominated the world in terms of magnitude and variety of exports. The environmental consequences were continued and highly damaging desertification, deforestation, and water, soil, and air pollution. These factors already combined, despite an agency for environmental protection and the setting aside of significant nature reserves, as serious threats to China’s natural biodiversity. China’s aquatic species, dealing with 90% contamination of the nation’s fresh water and with the steady construction of thousands of dams (dominated by the world’s largest, Three Gorges), have been the most threatened of all.

Xi Jinping has been the first Chinese leader to openly grapple with the world’s dominant environmental issue: human-caused warming of the planet, observed by scientists since the early 1960’s. For China this warming has meant:

-rising sea levels- coastal ecosystems (also home to 45% of the population), including tidal flats critical for migratory birds, have been eroding for 4 decades, and ocean salt, toxic to crops, has been moving inland and upstream, and into groundwater

-extreme swings in weather (more and more frequent alternation between droughts & floods)- the Yangtze Valley experienced flooding in Aug. 2020, and an extreme drought nearly dried up the river in the summer of 2022

-a slow-motion but accelerating shortage of water usable for people and agriculture, due to the rapid melting of western glaciers

This last is especially grave. China has about 14.5% of the world’s glaciers, enough to be known as a “third pole”. The Tibetan glaciers within China feed 4 extremely important river systems: the Yellow and Yangtze in China; the Brahmaputra, which flows through India to a massive delta in Bangladesh; and the Mekong, the largest river in Southeast Asia, affecting Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. More than a billion people rely on those systems. A quarter of the ice has already disappeared since 1970, as the region warms at three times the global average. At the present rate, 2/3 of the remaining ice will be gone within 80 years!

Xi, well aware that his nation, as the #1 greenhouse emitter, has exceptional responsibility for climate change (including doing half of the entire world’s coal combustion per year). He has expressed his policy responses through two slogans: first, that he wants to build an “ecological civilization”, and second, by his “two mountains” catchphrase- “Green waters and green mountains are gold mountains and silver mountains” (implying that preservation of nature means preservation of valuable resources). In line with his general hard line against dissent of any sort, he has not tolerated grassroots environmental protests (in his view only the Party should control policy). He has responded far more concretely than any predecessor to the warming crisis, by dramatically accelerating the development of renewable energy sources. The aim is for fossil fuel use to peak by 2035 at the latest, and for 80% of energy to come from renewables by 2060. China leads the world in solar and wind use and in the transition to electric vehicles, and makes the majority of the world’s solar panels. In a dramatic break with the past, he Chinese government, in partnership with the U.S. Obama Administration, signed the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, intended to bring down global emissions.

In the case of the water crisis, the Chinese government has accelerated what amounts to a seizure of the bulk of the shrinking meltwater resource, by building dams that control the headwaters of the great Brahmaputra and Mekong Rivers as well as China’s own rivers. The Brahmaputra is the main waterway for eastern India and Bangladesh, while the Mekong is just as vital for Laos, Cambodia, and southern Vietnam. This action, besides having negative environmental effects, has not surprisingly greatly increased tensions with China’s Indian and Southeast Asian neighbors. For example, there are now plans to build another mega-dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River, which runs through a gorge twice as deep as the Grand Canyon; Tibetans see it as sacred, as the "body" of a goddess, and it is a major Brahmaputra tributary, just 18 miles from the border with India.

Map of Yangtze Basin, by User:Shannon1 - Own work, with data from Natural Earth, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124510506

Xi should also be credited with taking some meaningful measures to preserve biodiversity, at home and abroad. He has announced a $232 million fund to promote biodiversity in developing countries (there may be another motive; the US is not a signatory to the world convention on biodiversity, so this is a chance for China to offer rival leadership). In 2015 he began the creation of a true national park system along U.S. lines. The 10 parks announced so far include a massive park on the northeast border, set aside to preserve the rare Siberian tiger subspecies and Amur leopard. He has also imposed, as part of a new Yangtze River Protection Law, 10-year fishing bans for the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers (causing the unemployment of tens of thousands of fishermen). In terms of trees, reforestation projects, on the dry Mongolia border and in the west, are continuing, and scientists now examine imported wood to identify threatened species (China is the world’s leading consumer of wood). I will discuss preservation efforts for particular species in the second part of this post (after a return to the Harris story!).

As always, thanks for reading this! I will include a list of resources for further exploration about the natural world of China, at the end of the second post.