RUHR-UNIVERSITÄT BOCHUM Fakultät für Ostasienwissenschaften The Trash and Treasures of Chinese Cities: Early to Late Twentieth-Century Approaches to Waste Management in Shanghai, Chengdu and Hong Kong Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades des Dr. Phil. vorgelegt von NELE FABIAN aus Essen Referentin: Prof. Dr. Christine Moll-Murata Korreferent: Sen. Prof. Dr. Heiner Roetz Bochum, den 20. Dezember 2019 Table of Contents List of Figures, Maps and Tables .......................................................................... i Conventions ........................................................................................................... iii Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Waste in the Context of China’s Environmental Crisis ...................................... 2 ‘Conquering Nature’ in China’s History of Thought .......................................... 5 Why A Historical Investigation of China’s Waste Problems? ............................ 7 Outline of the Thesis ......................................................................................... 10 Aims and Scope ...................................................................................................... 10 Structural Outline and Methodology ....................................................................... 11 Insights from Studying Chinese Waste History: The State of the Field ......... 25 “Waste” as A Social Construction .................................................................... 26 Waste Problems Viewed through A Historical Lens ........................................ 29 Waste in Chinese History ................................................................................. 34 Part I: Institutional, Legal and Organizational Frameworks to Waste Management .................................................................. 41 1. Waste Administration: A Local or a National Responsibility? ................... 43 1.1. Waste in the Context of East Asian Hygienic Modernity .......................... 46 1.1.1. The Introduction of Public Health to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chengdu ................................................................................................. 47 1.1.2. From Public Health to Waste Management .................................................. 50 1.2. Sanitary Institution Building: The Origins of Centralized Municipal Waste Management, 1900–1940s .............................................................. 51 1.2.1. Sanitary Administration in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Chengdu ................. 51 1.3. Regulating Urban Sanitation and Waste Removal, 1900–1980s ............... 62 1.3.1. Decontaminating the Cities: Waste Management Regulations before 1949 ................................................................................................... 63 1.3.2. National in Theory, Local in Practice: Implications for Waste Management in the People’s Republic’s Rule of Law and Public Administration .............................................................................................. 81 1.3.3. Waste Pollution as a Catalyst for Environmental Lawmaking in Mainland China (1970s to 1980s) ................................................................. 92 1.3.4. Hong Kong: The Struggle with Sustainability (1950s to 1980s) ................ 103 2. Waste Production, Waste Collection, and Sanitary Education ................. 110 2.1. Urbanization and Waste Production: Statistics on Urban Waste Growth ..................................................................................................... 111 2.1.1. Twentieth-century Urban Demographic Development .............................. 113 2.1.2. Twentieth-century Urban Waste Growth .................................................... 118 2.1.3. Discussion ................................................................................................... 125 2.2. Local Characteristics of Waste Collection ............................................... 128 2.2.1. Household Waste as Fertilizer .................................................................... 129 2.2.2. Street Cleaning and Waste Removal, 1900–1949 ...................................... 147 2.2.3. The Influence of the New Life Movement and War Time Sanitation ........ 167 2.3. Postwar Structural Changes in Urban Sanitation, 1949–1980: Reorganization and Campaigns ............................................................... 180 2.3.1. Everybody’s Responsibility: Street Cleaning in Communist Campaigns .................................................................................................. 182 2.3.2. Cleanliness Standards and Waste Collection .............................................. 192 2.3.3. Adjusting to Urban Density: Organizational Challenges of Mid to Late Twentieth-century Waste Collection in Hong Kong .......................... 199 Part I: Summary ................................................................................................ 212 Part II: Waste Pollution and Notions of Sustainability ....................... 214 3. Fighting and Creating Pollution with Technology: Historical Explanations for Landfill Dependence ........................................................ 215 3.1. The Role of Reclamation in Colonial Hong Kong’s Landfill Scheme .... 219 3.1.1. The Decline of Waste-based Reclamation: The Case of Gin Drinkers Bay Landfill ................................................................................................ 223 3.1.2. Waste Pollution and a Beginning Landfill Dilemma: Mitigation Attempts of the Late Colonial Phase .......................................................... 226 3.2. The Failure of Incineration Technology in Semi-colonial Shanghai and Colonial Hong Kong ......................................................................... 229 3.2.1. First Considerations on Incineration ........................................................... 229 3.2.2. The Limits of Landfilling in Shanghai’s Foreign Concessions .................. 235 3.2.3. Landfill Dependence in Hong Kong ........................................................... 242 3.3. Catering to National Recycling: Waste Management Technologies in Revolutionary Shanghai and Chengdu ................................................ 248 3.3.1. Landfilling, The ‘Three Wastes’ Campaign, and Industrial Waste Pollution ........................................................................................... 248 3.3.2. Machine-based Waste Management during the Mao Era ........................... 257 4. Turning Waste into Treasures: Twentieth-century Circular Economies ...................................................................................................... 263 4.1. Long-term Informal Recycling Structures ............................................... 265 4.1.1. The Scavenging Business in jindai China .................................................. 268 4.1.2. Transformation and Continuity in the Informal Recycling Sector during the Revolutionary and Reform Periods ........................................... 281 4.2. “Thrift and Hard Work”: A Close-up Look at Sustainability Knowledge Building in the Context of National Recycling .................... 289 4.2.1. Definitions of Waste in the ‘Recycling Manuals’ ...................................... 295 4.2.2. Long-term Adaptations of Recycling Knowledge and Ideology ................ 299 Part II: Summary .............................................................................................. 306 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 308 Bibliography ............................................................................................. 321 APPENDIX .................................................................................................. I Data Corresponding with the Illustrations in Chapter 2.1 ............................ I Population Development ............................................................................................ I Waste Production .................................................................................................... III Miscellaneous Illustrations on Waste Collection and Treatment ................ X List of Figures, Maps and Tables Figure 1. The Population of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chengdu, 1900s–1940s ..................................................................................... 114 Figure 2. The Population Composition of Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1930s ....................................................................................... 117 Figure 3. Total Daily Waste Production in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chengdu, 1900s to 1980s ........................................................... 119 Figure 4. Total Annual Waste Production in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chengdu, 1900s to 1980s .......................................................... 119 Figure 5. Total Annual Waste Production in Shanghai, 1900s to 1940s ......... 121 Figure 6. Per Capita Daily Waste Production in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chengdu, 1950s to 1980s ........................................................... 123 Figure 7. Unloading Waste at Gin Drinkers Bay Refuse Dump, Hong Kong, Ca. 1956. .................................................................................. X Figure 8. “Work of the Government Sanitary Department, Hong Kong, 1953. Refuse Collection: By Baskets” ...............................................