Lack of Incentive, Lack of Action

In “The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future” (2004), Elizabeth C. Economy looks at how China’s environment has suffered greatly at the hands of modernization, urbanization, and population growth. While China has tried to address its environmental problems, environmental improvement for certain plans may only be seen in the first few years of its implementation before the previous downward environmental trends resume. Based on the information presented in this article, I think that that one of the reasons these plans are not effective over long periods of time is because most of the action responsibility of environmental “solutions” are laid on rural farmers who do not see any incentive to implement these solutions.

Rural Chinese citizens believe it is their best interest to focus on industrial development instead of agricultural development. Liu Chuxin, Jiangxi Province’s Director of Agriculture, said, “it is now the universal view in all localities that they see slow returns from agricultural investment or no returns within a short time” (qtd. in Economy 2004: 82). As a result, while it may be better in the long run if rural citizens focused on agricultural in environmental terms, rural citizens do not think it is their best interest to focus on agriculture in terms of immediate return.

Finally, Rural citizens view environmental initiates as “backwards,” and since the initiatives are “backwards,” there is no social incentive for them to pursue these initiatives. For example, the head of Xishan said, “not even a single villager grows grain now. We’re not country bumpkins here” (qtd. in Economy 2004: 82). The villagers do not want to be seen as “country bumpkins.” They want to be modernized. Modernization is much more important to rural citizens than environmentalist issues. Knowing this, officials cater to this mentality. Zhang Weiqing, the head of the Naitonal Population and Family Planning Commission, said, “Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now…It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development” (qtd. in Economy 2004: 79). In other words, Zhang Weiqing connects the problem of population to social and economic development, not environmental development.

Essentially, rural citizens have no incentive to act on environmental initiatives. This is problematic because a lot of the environmental initiatives turn towards rural citizens as primary agents. As a result, if the environmental initiatives that rely on rural citizens are to be succeed over a prolonged period of time as opposed to just a few years, rural citizens need to be given immediate and continuous incentive.

Economy, Elizabeth C. 2004. The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.