Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
replaced by more 'reliable' alternatives. Newspapers and periodicals
are closed when writing too critically on the state or the Party. Mar-
ket competition is still limited in Vietnam's newspaper branch and
television is strongly in hands of the state. Investigative journalism is
hardly known. Although critical reporting on issues such as corrup-
tion, pollution and crime happens, they remain in the official party
line and never touch on the leaders and party in charge. In that
sense, compared to China, the conditions for informational gover-
nance through these conventional media are less favourable in con-
temporary Vietnam. Independent NGOs seem to have also a more
difficult position in Vietnam than in contemporary China, with few
international but hardly any domestic environmental NGOs active in
the mediascape.
51
Compared to Vietnam, the 'old' media in China are much more
active in collecting, publishing and broadcasting environmental
information, misbehaviour and protests. The national governmen-
tal authorities especially see information disclosure, media coverage
and (un)organised civil society complaints as an important correction
mechanism of the local priorities towards a one-dimensional devel-
opment path. Openness and nonstate information disclosure on local
environmental practices are important channels for the central state
to supplement vertical information flows through state structures.
Although information is still strongly controlled by the government and
company specific information about emissions is still either nonexistent
or not publicly available, the Chinese authorities allow more openness
and criticism to correct environmental misbehaviour and poor func-
tioning of environmental authorities. With this, in China - more than
in Vietnam - environmental information starts to become more than
just an instrument in the hands of the government and party. Environ-
mental NGOs, industrialists, different state fractions and individuals
use - or try to use - environmental information in their struggles. But,
compared to both the dominancy of conventional modes of governance
51
It is surprising to see the high ranking of Vietnam in several lists of numbers of
(environmental) NGOs, such as the one from the World Values Survey
1999-2002 (indicating that 7.6 percent of the Vietnamese population is a
member of an environmental NGO; see, for instance, Dalton,
2005
) and the
World Resources Institute database (http://earthtrends.wri.org), indicating ten
international NGOs per million inhabitants. One wonders what the definition
of NGO is in these databases.
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