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Almost every course on environmental politics includes discussion of the “Tragedy of the Commons,” the classic 1968 Science magazine essay in which Garrett Hardin articulates a core metaphor describing how human beings deplete shared resources (Hardin 1968). We professors often organize students around tables with goldfish crackers and straws and instruct them to go fishing – before long, there are no fish left in the “sea.” Hardin argued that rational individuals will necessarily and inevitably over-extract resources from shared spaces because their self-interests, collectively, outweigh the good of the group. In the essay, he describes townspeople who added so many sheep to an English common pasture that the fields could not sustain them. But the metaphor can be extended to other common “goods” – fisheries, forests, and water – as well as common “bads” – factory smokestack emissions, discharges into shared watercourses, “space junk,” and noise pollution. Hardin’s position is that “mutually agreed-upon coercion” is the only way to avoid the inevitable overexploitation of the shared resource; he lauds “the greater candor of the word coercion” and problematizes the ideal of individual freedom.

During the 1970s the essay was much discussed, and refuted, by scholars who objected to the authoritarian tenor of Hardin’s approach. They showed that “open access” resources like the fisheries of the high seas were very different from “common pool” resources like coastal fisheries where communities could agree through consultation to be bound by measures to assure sustainable use such as catch size, technology restrictions, permit issuance, and seasonal limits. Elinor Ostrom is best known for writing on this but many others have used combinations of economic game theory and sociological research to show that communities who know each other and expect to work together for the foreseeable future are more likely to create workable community-based resource management systems (Ostrom 1990; Petrzelka and Bell 2000). For transnational and planet-level environmental issues, the challenge is to create a “global community” that can cooperate to manage shared resources without succumbing to self-interest.

International environmental treaties provide a form of coercion established collaboratively through the consent of the governed, and at times they have offered great promise. In 1992, with the Rio Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development), it appeared that such global cooperation might work. There were high hopes that countries would overcome the barriers of sovereignty to manage transboundary environmental problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification, and so on. Along with 169 other countries, China signed the Rio Declaration and ratified many of the treaties that emerged from that historic meeting. By then, socialism was on the wane with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the debate over the need for coercive measures to resolve environmental problems had abated. Many Western scholars took it as a given that public participation, rule of law, and guarantees of access to information were necessary for robust environmental governance (Schnaiberg 1980; Young 1994). Unfortunately, since then environmental governance has struggled to find broad consensus and legitimacy at local, regional, international, and global levels.

In recent decades, it has become increasingly clear that the promise of the Rio Earth Summit has not been realized apart from isolated successes with phasing out a short list of ozone-depleting chemicals like CFCs and controlling obvious neurotoxins like mercury. The democratic elections of Donald Trump in the US and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, both of whom actively undermined principles and protections for the natural world, have further challenged assumptions about liberal market systems’ environmental virtues. Can the planet afford a messy liberal democratic process when the threats are so urgent?

In this context, then, eco-authoritarianism seems to some observers and scholars to offer a possible solution when other measures have failed. Among those who have revived the conversation is Mark Beeson, who writes, in “The Coming of Environmental Authoritarianism,” that “good” authoritarianism, where unsustainable behaviors are outright banned, by fiat, is essential for the long-term survival of humanity (Beeson 2010). Predictably, the essay sparked refutations. For example, Dan Coby Shahar writes that even though liberal market democracy does not seem to offer much hope for the environment, eco-authoritarianism is “not an attractive alternative” because the ruling class may not be capable of producing or implementing pro-environmental policies over the long run (Shahar 2015). During the revived debate, many environmentalists continue to argue instead for cooperative global governance of environmental problems through better multilateral treaties and institutions, on the grounds of shared interests and the findings of scientists. Others seek to reform global trade by internalizing the environmental costs of production and making them more transparent, and by changing the mindsets of consumers. Still others see hope in empowering local communities and restricting the extractive power of international corporations (Clapp and Dauvergne 2011).

Scholars of coercive state-led environmentalism have turned their focus to China to flesh out the implications of managing the environment through authoritarian means. The empirical literature has generated valuable insights into three main dimensions of Chinese environmental governance. First, research has uncovered a range of governmental tools that characterize the state’s efforts to manage the environment. Often, technocratic elites take a dominant position in defining environmental problems in purely technical terms (Gilley 2012; Kostka and Zhang 2018). With these mechanistic approaches, officials set quantitative goals and targets for the ostensible purposes of monitoring environmental conditions and enforcing environmental standards (Kostka 2016; Yifei Li 2019). However, these targets give rise to “blunt force regulations” that over-enforce environmental mandates to the detriment of the livelihoods of ordinary citizens (van der Kamp 2017). Moreover, state-led environmental programs tend to orient toward outcomes but forgo transparency and justice (Johnson 2001; Chen and Lees 2018). On a positive note, in some cases the outcome orientation gives the local state a high level of flexibility and adaptability in enforcing environmental regulations (Ahlers and Shen 2017; Zhu and Chertow 2019). This first aspect of state-led environmentalism features a constellation of routine governmental tools used by state officials and bureaucrats in their exercise of environmental power. Some of these tools prove effective in advancing environmental goals, but others have mixed environmental, as well as political, consequences.

Second, the extensive use of state-centric governmental tools gives rise to changes in state–society relations. As the state increasingly intervenes into the environmental realm, it becomes commonplace for the state to regulate everyday citizen behaviors through coercive means (Eaton and Kostka 2014). From recycling to driving vehicles, environmental regulations are often instituted without meaningful public participation or grassroots input, giving the state sweeping power in its pursuit of environmental ends, with only limited access to feedback that might correct any missteps (Mao and Zhang 2018). With no threat that power holders will be removed from office via ballot or other electoral device, the state is unaccountable for its coercive dictates. Yet, the state has to come to terms with an increasingly diverse range of non-state environmental actors, from citizens to independent scientists, which the state needs but also fears (van Rooij et al. 2016; Guttman et al. 2018). Within its ambivalent relationship with society, the Chinese state casts a changeable shadow over the full range of environmental affairs. It narrows the space for non-state engagement in some cases (Wilson 2016), but also inadvertently creates opportunities in others (Geall 2018). In recent years, for example, domestic civil society organizations have seen some measure of success in their pursuit of environmental accountability, but international organizations are subject to increasing scrutiny and pressure (Tilt 2019). Taken together, China’s state–society relations are in flux. In this constantly shifting landscape of power, growing non-state interests in environmental affairs are met with escalating state efforts to contain and co-opt the space for public participation.

Third, the rise of China’s state-led environmentalism reflects a broad trend toward power centralization under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. For example, measures to tackle “airpocalypses” in urban areas have followed a top-down model that excludes even lower-level officials from the political process, making environmental programs part of a much larger authoritarian agenda of state control and power centralization (Ahlers and Shen 2018; Kosta and Zhang 2018). Although centralization is often assumed to produce better environmental results (Gilley 2012), it is not a panacea when the central government lacks adequate information about complex local realities (Kostka and Nahm 2017). Moreover, in an increasingly authoritarian era, the state has embarked on aggressive initiatives to use emerging technologies and big data analytics to buttress the centralization of environmental power (Kostka and Zhang 2018). Existing research on China points to the emergence of a highly centralized “hard” authoritarian model of government (Shambaugh 2016), under which environmental policies become a vehicle for the consolidation and centralization of state power (Yeh 2013). The state profits from the environmental crisis by projecting itself as the sole legitimate steward of the environment.

Such dynamics are not limited to authoritarian regimes, although they find their starkest expression there. As Naomi Klein and others have argued, natural disasters can sometimes provide opportunities for capitalist societies to impose neo-liberal policies that might otherwise have been resisted (Klein 2010). This problem is related to what some scholars identify as the “environmental fix” for the capitalist crises of our time. David Harvey’s classic analysis of late capitalism points to its tendency to “fix” or deal with overaccumulation and underconsumption through global expansion into new spaces, temporarily displacing the crisis that results from such contradictions by finding new resources and markets (Harvey 1985; Bakker 2004; Castree 2008). State-led environmentalism can, and often does, serve non-environmental ends to strengthen the authority and reach of the state.

In sum, the debate over coercive state-led environmentalism may be one of the most pressing conversations of our time. Many people find themselves longing for radical solutions, as it appears time is running out. Even those who treasure liberal values and respect for human rights and public participation find themselves wondering if non-democratic measures may be necessary to protect the planet. They wonder if the earth may be in need of an autocrat to protect it from the abuses of people. Science and ecological necessity, rather than deliberative public processes, goes the argument, may be the most responsible ways to structure the governance systems of the future. This book will challenge this line of reasoning.

Here, we take stock of this rich body of past scholarship in order to evaluate China’s approach to environmental protection. Building on previous research, we conceptualize coercive state-led environmentalism as a three-dimensional enterprise:

 State-led environmentalism materializes through a range of top-down governmental tools, techniques, and technologies that have the ostensible goal of environmental protection.

 The state manages its relations with the society by incorporating some non-state environmental interests while maintaining and consolidating its dominant position.

 The practice of state-led environmentalism has non-environmental spillover effects, most notably on the centralization of political power and the suppression of individual rights and public participation.

In each of the following four empirical chapters, we begin by identifying the primary governmental tools employed in the name of protecting, improving, or rehabilitating the environment. Examples include pollution crackdowns, centrally administered campaign-style inspections, target-setting, behavior modification, forcible relocations, big data monitoring, manipulating global trade, and geoengineering. Then, through a review of cases and examples where these tools are used, we evaluate the different mechanisms and discuss their social and political implications.

As the reader may have noticed, we use the terms “coercive environmentalism” and “state-led environmentalism” interchangeably with authoritarian environmentalism or eco-authoritarianism derived from past scholarship. We should also note that there are a host of other related terms – including eco-fascism, eco-totalitarianism, and eco-terrorism, as well as environmental fascism, environmental totalitarianism, and environmental terrorism – expressing the concept of coercion from both the political Right and Left. We agree with Anna Ahlers and Yongdong Shen (2018) that the notion of authoritarian environmentalism is a useful heuristic device, but it does not fully capture the nuances of how policies, practices, and social relations unfold on the ground. In an effort to investigate the practice of non-democratic approaches to environmental protection, then, we highlight the centrality of the state and its coercive power under the leadership of the Communist Party.

A note on the relationship between state and Party is in order as well. Beginning in 1987, under ongoing reforms first instituted by Premier Deng Xiaoping, a policy called “Separation of Party and State” – dangzheng fenjia 党政分家 – was enshrined into the main political report of the 13th Party Congress. Under this policy, the Communist Party was to yield day-to-day government operations to institutions like the National People’s Congress and State Council, leaving the Party to provide overarching guidance and to intervene only in major decisions. To avoid overconcentration of power, the passage of laws, implementation, and administration was to belong to the state rather than the Party (Chamberlain 1987; Zheng 2009). Since the rise of Xi Jinping, however, the supreme power of the Party has been reasserted in almost all critical governance institutions (Wang and Zeng 2016). For this reason, when we refer to the Chinese state in this book, we almost always mean the Chinese state under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Boundaries are so blurred that the institutions are all but inseparable.

China Goes Green follows the trajectory of the Chinese state under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as it wields environmental power at home and abroad. We also engage the debate over the nature and scope of China’s “consultative authoritarianism” in an effort to shed light on the particular governance style that the CCP has developed to maintain power for so many decades. The mobilization of grassroots neighborhood-level actors and volunteers, the co-optation of citizens’ groups to further state goals, and the system of social rewards and punishments all have roles to play in the environmental realm, even as they fall short of a participatory governance system that would allow truly independent citizen organizations and supervision from below.