Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
energy.
10
Yet, China's investments in green technology are also seen as a
cause for alarm by elected o' cials and trade bodies in the United States. For
example, the U.S. International Trade Commission imposed tariff s on Chi-
nese solar panels of 24-36 percent, accusing Chinese solar manufacturers of
dumping cheaply made panels.
11
In the United States, our ecological desire is
defi ned by an ecological blame-the-victim game. We focus on China at the
moment when its carbon emissions surpass ours and ignore that our per
capita rate is far higher. And it's not just about carbon. In 2004, according to
a World Bank Report, China surpassed the United States as the world's larg-
est waste generator.
12
We fear China and its pollution; at the same time, we are defi ned by our
envy of the power of authoritarian government to make positive environ-
mental changes. In contrast, Chinese eco-desire takes a related, but some-
what diff erent form. I suggest that Chinese eco-desire is based on three
closely linked factors: technocratic faith in engineering, reliance on authori-
tarian political structures to facilitate environmental improvements, and
discourse of “ecological harmony” between man and nature.
13
h e rest of the
examples in this topic—Chongming, Dongtan, suburbanization, and the
World Expo—are examples of these factors at work.
In China, the shape that eco-development takes is a direct result of the
authoritarian political structures that promote and enable large-scale plan-
ning—though these “big” plans for improvement often lead to signifi cant
environmental devastations, most notoriously (but not only) the h ree
Gorges Dam.
14
Contemporary Chinese environmental policy is defi ned by
the tendency to build on an epic scale. In political scientist James C.
Seeing
Like a State,
he explains what it means to “see like a state.”
15
In the twentieth
century, large-scale plans for improving the human condition often went
spectacularly, and sometimes violently, wrong (examples include compul-
sory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier's
urban planning theory in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, and
