Why China’s Environmental Future May Depend on Reclaiming Some of Its Past

Urban Versus Rural Life

Chinese cities and air pollution nearly go hand in hand. Ten of the world’s 16 most-polluted cities are in China. Airborne particulate levels in Beijing are six times higher than in New York City. And the World Bank estimates that air pollution alone causes at least 700,000 premature deaths annually in China.

A process thought center in Shanghai, which opened in 2007, collaborates with the local government to design and build simple cities. The designers of most Chinese cities try to emulate New York, thinking that size is everything. But Wang said, “China can’t afford this way.”

To improve China’s urban air, Wang promotes a Green Biking project in collaboration with Sheri Liao, the leader of the Global Village of Beijing, one of China’s first environmental organizations, founded in 1996. Hundreds of millions of Chinese already rely on bicycles. But this is by necessity, not choice. Owning a bike is equated with poverty, and driving a car symbolizes success. So Wang and Liao are trying to convince Chinese youth that biking is a forward-thinking, not outdated, option. They also promote bicycle repair as a skill that allows old bikes to be overhauled, just as process thought updates traditional Chinese philosophies. With 14,000 new cars added to China’s roads each day and 130 million total cars expected by 2020, Wang and Liao hope their efforts amount to more than just spinning their wheels.

Liao, an advocate of process thought, was one of China’s “Green People of the Year” in December 2006. Currently Liao organizes activities that incorporate spirituality, health concerns and environmental protection in a program called Environmental Protection for Life. She also teaches rural Chinese how to improve their local environment and use the native beauty to attract visitors. Liao is the main author of the “Villagers’ Environmental Guide” (2006), which lays out a more eco-friendly lifestyle for the 900 million Chinese country dwellers.

Modern farming practices rely on heavy equipment and fossil fuels that replace human labor and uproot peasants from the countryside. But, according to Wang, the Chinese government wants to develop a more labor-intensive post-modern approach to farming that is less destructive of the land and stems the tide of farmers migrating to cities for work. Instead of clearing forests to plant rice, farmers can grow mushrooms in the mountains. Post-modern agriculture strives for the diversity of ecosystems and the diversity of villages. “In this way, farmers don’t need to leave their land and go to cities to work,” said Wang.

At a postmodern agriculture conference at the end of July, professor Zhixiong Du, a senior researcher from the Agriculture Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, spoke about how the Chinese government has sponsored over 50 counties that focus on developing postmodern agriculture. It will then use the most successful counties as examples for the rest of China to emulate.

China’s Future

China is moving closer to latching on to a philosophical foundation for motivating environmental policy. Philosophy is more highly regarded in China as part of the social sciences, unlike in the United States where it falls under the humanities umbrella. From the perspective of the Chinese, philosophy directs people how to change the world and guides policy development, said Cobb. So by teasing out the various applications of process thought, Claremont’s China Project and the centers throughout China allow process thought to begin to assume the transforming role that the Chinese expect from a philosophy.

The tide also may be turning on a national level. China’s government may be recognizing that a hard-science approach to environmental reform will not suffice. The Chinese government tried to improve the country’s ecology with the tools of science and technology. But the government’s failure in using a simple top-down, technocratic approach has fostered a willingness to adopt a more inclusive mindset like process thought. A rise in the number of political candidates with social science backgrounds during this past fall’s elections, as well as the elevation of several individuals within China’s Proletariat with comparable educations, indicates that China is becoming more inclined to incorporate systemic change necessary to both allow process thought to take root as well as remedy societal problems such as China’s environmental woes.

As Cobb noted, the Chinese are an experimental nation. “I think the Chinese know now that they need a way forward that doesn’t continue the status quo.” And now more than ever, he says, they need a radical alternative that will help improve their country’s environment.

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