Ecologizing industrialization in Chinese small towns

 

For historical reasons, any policies that attempt to address issues of Chinese farmers, agriculture and rural society are doomed to be facing dilemmas. One typical example is the question how to protect the rural environment during the ongoing rapid industrialization and urbanization processes in rural China, driven by Township & Village Enterprises (TVEs) and Small Towns. The economic and social achievements of TVEs and Small Towns are celebrated and are widely regarded as magic weapons to alleviate rural poverty, to mitigate population pressure on limited arable land and to narrow gaps between the urban and rural societies without causing social unrest. By the same token, however, the environmental consequences of the current development modes are deliberately put between brackets, hoping that environmental problems will be automatically solved with increased income levels and technological advancements. Unfortunately, the environmental pollution and ecological destruction one can observe in many of Township & Village Industrial Enterprises (TVIE)-dominated Small Towns have already hampered sustainable development of the local and regional economies. China has reached the moment that environmental problems in rural areas can no longer be ignored and solutions call for concerted efforts.

Responding to the many problems Small Towns face (including environmental pollution), a number of decisions and policies have been enacted by the Chinese Government to guide and facilitate the development of TVEs and Small Towns. The strategy of combining Small Town development and TVE strengthening is also stressed in the Tenth Five-Year Plan of TVEs, mainly through better zoning and restructuring. However, few studies have been done on how these policies correspond with or affect environmental strategies of Small Towns and TVEs.

This thesis deals with these dilemmas and questions by analyzing the potential and actual (f)actors in environmental regulation games in Small Town-TVIE complexes. What environmental strategies are adopted under what conditions in Small Towns to safeguard economic development via TVIEs, without jeopardizing the sustenance base by uncontrolled environmental deterioration? To this end, theoretical perspectives are needed to investigate the ways TVIEs and Small Town governments deal with environmental challenges and to understand the reasons behind their behavior. This thesis combines the holistic view of the Chinese Complex Eco-system Theory and the Western Ecological Modernization Theory to provide a new perspective towards environmental management of TVIEs in Small Towns. Based on these two theories, a theoretical framework for ecologizing industrialization in Small Towns is established.

This theoretical framework takes into consideration the complexity of environmental issues in Small Town, the potential (f)actors involved and the interactions between them on the one hand, and focuses on institutional arrangements and innovations that are necessary to catalyze ecologizing industrialization processes on the other hand. One of the features of this framework is that it regards TVIEs and Small Town Governments as alliances instead of opponents in environmental regulation. Ecologizing industrialization in the context of Small Towns has been framed as an embedded process that involves the state, the market, the TVE-Town Government alliances and the community/public. The roles of these actors and the interrelations between them are decisive for the outcomes of the environmental triangle game. Following this line of reasoning we investigate four types of relations or networks: TVIEs-Town Government relations, (county/municipal, provincial and national) state-alliance relations, market-alliance relations and community-alliance relations.

For this, empirical studies of five Small Towns from Jiangsu and Anhui provinces are used, next to general observations and secondary literature. These five case study towns (Luzhi, Hengshanqiao, Digang, Guandou and Daxing) represent different types of Small Towns in terms of geographical locations, economic strength, governing styles, environmental problems and environmental attitudes. These cases have generated diverse environmental reform strategies that these alliances apply in their confrontation with environmental problems: political modernization; aid-oriented model; technology-based strategies; export-driven model; and shift-to-service industry strategy. Although any generalization of successes and failures in environmental management from these five cases should be taken with great caution, the value of these selective case studies lies in widening our view and understanding of the universe of possibilities to control TVE pollution and the necessary conditions for such success. These case studies also trigger reflections on necessary institutional reforms at higher levels, beyond Small Towns.

This thesis concludes that TVIE-caused environmental problems and their solutions in Small Towns are the results of the interactions between different alliances and their external social environments. The solutions to TVIE environmental problems lay in reforming and innovating the existing organizations, institutions and the roles of the government, market and community.

Secondly, this study has made clear that the failures of the current environmental regulations towards TVIEs lay in the gap between limited environmental management capacity and the complexity of TVIE environmental problems. The magnitude of TVIE pollution in Small Towns underlines the urgent need for China to create and enforce effective environmental protection and conservation policies. To this end, there is an urgent need for local capacity building.

Third, the experiences in the five Small Towns illustrate that the role of community in environmental decision-making is as yet largely untapped. This confirms that the ongoing reform policies pertaining to Small Towns-TVIEs development and environmental protection are still government-initiated and driven programs. Similarly, the positive influence of the market on the environmental performance of alliances is also limited due to the overall low environmental awareness of both the production and consumption sides in China.

Forth, the international environment and national policies seem to develop increasingly into a favorable social environment for environmental reforms in Small Towns. However, there are some clear barriers facing Small Towns and TVIEs: (1) ill-defined land property structures and poor financing mechanisms for public and environmental projects; (2) lack of self-sustaining operational mechanisms for environmental facilities; (3) absence of town level environmental regulatory agencies; (4) the mismatch between administrative division and ecological division; (5) unclear rural land tenure and spatial planning not integrated with environmental planning; and (6) lack of political motivation to encourage public participation.

The last, with all these aforementioned experiences and problems, towns are ideal models to test the institutions of the China of tomorrow. This study also supports the statement that, in one regard, the industrial countries are late comers: in reflections of a more holistic concept of environmental policy.