Old Woes and New Pains

Abstract

This chapter provides necessary historical background on China's state environmentalism and makes three main points about environmental pollution and governance in China. First, environmental degradation existed long before its impact entered the public consciousness. Second, rising scrutiny was not merely a product of objective pollution levels, but also of international and domestic political shifts. Third, the development of contemporary China's environmental bureaucracy over the past four decades followed certain predictions of typology. The chapter points out how environmental governance in China was largely inert as the bureaucracy neither possessed the capacity that would allow it to govern, nor confronted the public scrutiny inciting it to act. It points out that China's environmental state has at times switched gears toward substantive governance, but substantive environmental governance remains sporadic.