Dwelling on a Wasteland: Externality, Environmental Injustice, and Materiality in Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide

Abstract

Contemporary Chinese science fiction writer Chen Qiufan begins his debut novel Waste Tide (Huangchao 荒潮, 2013; English translation, 2019) with an entry on the Basel Convention. Adopted in 1989 by the Conference of Plenipotentiaries, the Basel Convention aimed to respond to the public outcry following the discovery—in the 1970s and 1980s, in Africa, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the developing world—of deposits of toxic wastes imported from the industrialized world. In the spirit of what became known as the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome, developed countries have been exporting toxic wastes to the rest of the world where regulatory mechanisms are either much less restrictive or entirely lacking. With the accelerating manufacture and consumption of digital technology all over the globe, electronic waste has become the fastest-growing trash stream, the worldwide accumulation of which has more than doubled over the past decade, with the annual total predicted to exceed 57 million tons in 2021 (Larmer). Prior to its waste import ban implemented in 2018, China had imported about 70 percent of the world’s e-waste (Larmer; Watson). It has been reported that China’s trash import ban has shifted part of the unfolding waste crisis to Southeast Asia (Parker; Hook and Reed).