Wenbao Wenti, Huanbao Wenti: Competing Models of Sustainability in Rural Sichuan Bryan Tilt University of Washington Department of Anthropology, Box 353100 Seattle, WA 98195-3100 206-790-2743 1 Wenbao Wenti, Huanbao Wenti: Competing Models of Sustainability in Rural Sichuan This miracle [of rapid economic growth] will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace . We recently shut down 30 projects, including several power plants [because] the companies involved failed—as required by law—to review what effect their new investments would have on the environment . My agency has always gone against the grain. In the process, there have always been conflicts with the powerful lobbyist groups and strong local governments. But the people, the media, and science are behind us. In fact, the pressure is a motivator for me. Nobody is going to push me off my current course. (Pan Yue, PRC Deputy Minister of the Environment1) Noting the poor state of environmental protection in China, recent scholarship sees the implementation of sustainable policy as a constant struggle between environmentalist citizens’ groups, who seek to “green” China, and the state, which seeks to suppress environmental protection in order both to sustain the country’s high rate of economic growth and to prevent the spilling over of environmentalist action into the arena of national politics, which could become a direct affront to state power (Dai and 1 “The Chinese Miracle Will End Soon: Interview with China’s Deputy Minister of the Environment.” Der Spiegel, March 7, 2005. 2 Vermeer 1999; Ho 2001; Lo and Leung 2000; Weller 1999). But recent speeches by high Communist Party officials, including former President Jiang Zemin, point to a shift toward a new discourse of sustainability on the part of the central government in Beijing. This discourse borrows heavily from the international discourse of sustainability that gained momentum after the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development, which popularized the phrase “sustainable development.” When viewed in the light of China’s growing framework of environmental law, and recent actions taken by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to stop the development of large-scale projects that threaten to have massive environmental impacts2, this discursive shift signals the CCP’s willingness to acknowledge the importance of environmental sustainability in its development goals. During the past twenty-five years, China’s Reform and Opening policies have resulted in dramatic increases in foreign trade and an annual GDP growth rate hovering near double digits. One of the most extraordinary parts of this success story has been the rural industrial sector. By the turn of this century, China boasted some 20 million rural firms employing more than 130 million workers and accounting for one-third of the gross 2 A recent article in People’s Net (Renminwang), a national media outlet, reports that thirty large-scale industrial projects were halted by SEPA for failure to conduct proper environmental impact analyses. The stalled projects, many of them with investment from municipal and provincial governments, are scattered across thirteen provinces and are collectively worth billions of dollars. See “30 Ge Weifa Kaigong Xiangmu Mingdan Gongbu ‘Huanping Fengbao’ Guajin Huanbao Xian” [Names of Thirty Illegally Started Projects Announced, ‘Tempest of Environmental Review’ Tightens the String of Environmental Protection.” Renminwang, January 18, 2005. 3 domestic product (Chinese Statistical Bureau 2001). Although the long-term future of the rural industrial sector remains uncertain due to declining profitability, increased competition and a general movement toward privatization (Li and Rozelle 2003; Oi 1999a; Williams 2001), rural industry remains a vital revenue source for many township and village governments, and the primary engine of economic growth in the countryside. Rapid industrialization in the countryside has come at a heavy cost to the environment, and both Chinese and international scholars acknowledge that, “at the same time that TVEs have developed very rapidly, they have also brought serious pollution problems” (Ren and Li 2002). These include both air and water pollution emissions that threaten the health and well-being of rural residents and the integrity of the agro- ecosystems in which most rural industries are located (Ho 1995: 375; Ren and Li 2002). Rural firms currently emit roughly two-thirds of China’s air and water pollution (China Industrial Development Report 2000; World Bank 1997), and this fact is underpinned by a number of systemic problems. Coal, the most abundant energy source in China, is almost universally the fuel of choice for rural industry. Because most rural firms are small in scale, they tend to lack the capital to invest in environmental mitigation technology. In addition, some fiscal peculiarities endemic to the rural industrial sector—a high degree of interdependence between government and industry, the strict revenue demands placed upon rural industry, and a cadre evaluation system that emphasizes industrial development (Oi 1999b; Whiting 2000)—contribute to the pollution problem by creating financial incentives to ignore the problem or to fail to enforce nationally mandated emissions standards (Ren Hongwei and Li Gong 2002). 4 The rural industrial sector thus represents one of the most salient environmental and health risks currently faced by China’s population. Because of its role as the engine of economic growth in the countryside, it also represents a focal point in the growing controversy surrounding sustainable development. This article discusses how the burgeoning discourse of sustainability at the national level in the PRC relates to the local problem of industrial pollution control in a township in rural Sichuan. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2002-2003, the article describes the environmental regulatory regime at the grassroots level in Futian Township, Panzhihua Municipality, Sichuan Province which ultimately resulted in the closure of local factories for non- compliance with nationally mandated emissions standards. The closure of local factories in Futian has several implications worth considering. First, it forces us to rethink the notion that the Chinese government is not serious about enacting sustainable environmental policies and practices. This article demonstrates that the new discourse of sustainability at the central government level filters down to the lower-level government entities responsible for enforcing compliance with emissions standards, and that officials within the district-level Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) see their enforcement duties as an extension of this national discourse.3 3 Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs), as the most peripheral entities in the SEPA bureaucracy, represent the grassroots level of enforcement of environmental policy in China. The World Bank publication, Clear Water, Blue Skies: China’s Environment in the New Century, emphasizes that regulatory enforcement has been the weak link in China’s environmental policy, and that “monitoring and enforcement must take place at the local level” (See also Ho 2000; World Bank 1997). 5 Government statistics show a steady increase in nationwide investment for pollution treatment for industrial firms of all sizes, from RMB 8.2 billion in 1999 to RMB 16.3 billion in 2003 (Chinese Statistical Bureau 2004). Alongside this increase in spending for pollution control is a growing trend toward closing industrial firms that fail to meet emissions standards. This article provides insight into the processes and consequences of such a trend for local communities. Second, the closure of Futian’s factories by the district EPB forces us to move beyond thinking of the Chinese state as a singular entity with clearly definable interests. This event reveals the divergent positions and interests of various state agencies in regards to the question of sustainable development. The dynamic tension between the center and the periphery is a common theme in much of Chinese political history, and the tension has, if anything, evolved and deepened during the reform period (Blecher 1996; O'Brien 1996; Selden 1998; Whiting 2000). I suggest here that, within the realm of environmental politics, even a single-party state such as China contains controversial positions within different levels of government and that these positions have important consequences for determining how sustainable development is defined and implemented. Finally, this article suggests that, while the roots of intra-state conflict over sustainability are economic in nature, stemming from the continuing problem of heavy reliance on industrial revenue at the township and village levels, the conflict is also ideological and value-laden insofar as it hinges on the question: What should be sustained? In particular, the closure of factories in Futian came to hinge on the contested meanings of sustainable development itself, with different levels of government advocating wholly different models of sustainability based variously on preserving 6 ecological integrity, promoting community development and retaining important industrial revenue. Toward a Discourse of Sustainability? Chairman Mao Zedong once famously declared that “if people living in nature want to be free, they will have to use natural sciences to understand nature, to overcome nature and to change nature; only then will they obtain freedom