A FUTURE FOR WILDLIFE IN WESTERN CHINA - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 227

loosening of currently strict prohibitions. As well, prudent-use strategies should allow
for protected areas (albeit perhaps smaller than those currently drawn) in which both
commercial activity and local use are explicitly prohibited.
In summing up his view of the long history of environmental change in China, historian
Mark Elvin wrote:
There seems to be no case for thinking that, some details apart, the Chinese an-
thropogenic environment was developed and maintained in the way it was over
the long run of more than three millennia because of particular characteristically
Chinese beliefs or perceptions. Or, at least, not in comparison with the massive
effects of the pursuit of power and profit in the area provided by the possibilities
and limitations of the Chinese natural world, and the technologies that grew from
interactions with them. 26
In seeming contrast, I have argued that Chinese beliefs and perceptions have been
influential in creating the present difficulties for wildlife (and perhaps my argument is
the reason for Elvin's subsequent modification of this initially strong statement—“or, at
least, not in comparison with . . .”—giving some credence to the counterargument that
particularly Chinese beliefs may indeed have played some role). But what Elvin describes
as being the primary motivation underlying the 3,000-year Chinese transformation of the
environment in what I have termed eastern China sounds a great deal like what the current
government policy holds in store for western China.
To the degree that China becomes more developed (in the sense Chinese desire) even
in its wild west, the Chinese might increasingly adopt less utilitarian or anthropocentric
views toward nature. But that will be cold comfort for wildlife if such development is
associated with the continued pursuit of “power and profit,” and particularly as Chinese
technology continues to minimize the limitations imposed by the geography of western
China. Development at the cost of western China's irreplaceable wildness will be a tar-
nished success. The better standard to which Chinese might aspire would be achieving a
modicum of increased affluence and respect in the world, while still retaining substantial
portions of their western region's natural legacy.