Ecological perspectives on sustainability in China

The chapter examines issues of air pollution and water diversion. The author argues that it is necessary to take subaltern and ecological perspectives in challenging statist, elitist and anthropocentric discourses and practices in relation to the question of sustainability in China. The chapter updates data and discusses air pollution and lung cancers in China, and the South-to-North water diversion project. It argues that the modernization paradigm that China pursues has been characteristically privileging industry over agriculture, urban over rural, and middle class over subaltern, hence growth statistics and resource emphases are all geared to such a development paradigm. “Modernization” itself is not questioned, and it justifies the “price” that need to be paid. In the modernization discourse in China, “de-growth” is almost unthinkable. It concludes that it is necessary to articulate socio-economic justice with ecological justice and consider the cultural dimensions of Chinese society and political economy as part and parcel of the development paradigm.