Jiang Village- a glimpse of China’s effort to curb carbon emissions at the grassroots level

“To be sure, out of this soil has grown a glorious history, but it is a history that was naturally limited by what could be taken from the soil.”​ — Fei Xiaotong, From the Soil: The Foundation of Chinese Society

Home to the Huxley Memorial Medal winner Fei Xiaotong, one of the most prestigious anthropologists in China, Jiang Village in the southwest of Suzhou has been a Mecca for students interested in rural Chinese society as well as its transition. The School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University, all students of which were expected to be taken to Jiang Village for their class project annually, was not an exception. Out of sheer luck, I got the recommendation from a book club in our college and managed to join them in conducting fieldwork on rural development and grass-roots governance in this holy land of social science.

Jiang Village at first glance

Rich in its cultural heritage, the local government has launched several development initiatives including a flagship museum in memory of Fei Xiaotong designed by architects from Tongji University, a showcase for local officials to mark their achievement in boosting the local economy and building a “new socialist countryside”(“建设社会主义新农村”). The evolution of agricultural technology and the local industry, along with thousands of years of sweat, anguish and happiness of the rank and file, especially their resilience and entrepreneurship in the age of turmoil, were displayed in the first part of the museum. The second part was, of course, concentrated on the academic journey and public participation of Dr. Fei Xiaotong. What intrigued me most was not only his lifelong academic interest that seeks to understand and embody his origin, Jiang Village, or more generally, Chinese countryside, but also his commitment in ameliorating the living standards of his people, even during the Cultural Revolution when he became an enemy of them. And what he said during his 80th birthday party about the future of anthropology couldn’t be more relevant in today’s China and elsewhere in the world: “Every form of beauty has its uniqueness, precious is to appreciate other forms of beauty with openness, if beauty represents itself with diversity and integrity, the world will be blessed with harmony and unity”(“各美其美，美人之美，美美与共，天下大同”).

Later the village chief invited us to a lecture hall in the village council for a presentation about the status quo in his district and the remaining challenges they were about to work out. In the past ten years, marvelous progress has been made pertaining to the establishment of high-quality public schools, continuing improvements of workers’ salary, extended coverage of basic universal health care and the implementation of high-standard environmental protection policies. The paramount problem was, like many other places that I have visited, the underrepresentation of young locals in small enterprises and businesses in Jiang Village. Albeit they offered a monthly salary of 1000 USD, a relatively high number for factory workers, even in comparison with a metropolis like Shanghai where the average income was around 10000 USD/y, those grew up there would nonetheless work in fancy offices in a big city rather than stay in their hometown for labor-intensive work. Consequently, workers in Jiang Village were comprised of migrants from other less developed regions, whose life quality might even be a bit better than those migrated to Shanghai (with a PPP per capita at around 40000 USD) as their purchasing power was going to be stronger (meanwhile Shanghai is not the richest city in China in terms of GDP/PPP per capita, Suzhou, Shenzhen and many other cities have a higher number when it comes to individual output).

A glimpse of how grass-roots politics works in China I

The village official in charge of the publicity campaign was elected by all villagers at first and then appointed by the village head, according to whom we got to know the key stakeholders of village-level environmental protection — the contractors in China’s household responsibility system, i.e. villagers who ran a pond or a land, and the staff from the cleaning service. Those contracted villagers were expected to abide by environmental standards and reduce the use of pesticides and disinfectants to a harmless level. When asked about how to deal with uncooperative residents or factories, the village official suggested they would call on other villagers and party members to help coordinate, and if it failed to work, the last resort would be taking it to higher authorities. Moreover, in response to our curiosity about whether it was effective to report to the higher level, he said it was contingent upon the severity of the pollution, if it was serious, residents would be more likely to get engaged and actively report cases of wrongdoing, then officials would respond expeditiously and concurrent punishment would be imposed on the factory; otherwise, it would take longer time before any difference being made. This echoed the feedback from one villager we interviewed later, whose observation has proved that village officials’ decision-making was largely determined by the will of both villagers and higher authorities, and villagers could and would report to those officials whenever major pollution was discovered. Contended about the progress made in the past few years, he applauded the fact that rivers in his hometown were cleaner than ever while the behavior of residents and factories was getting more and more environmental-friendly. For example, starting last year, a set of designated waste containers have been delivered to every household for recommended garbage sorting.

A glimpse of how grass-roots politics works in China II

Then came an interview with a local textile factory proprietor, whose experience bespoke the indiscernible socio-economic impact of the government’s “War on Pollution” (I like those who created these terms to mock American politics), which has always been obscured by mainstream reports about the progress and the imperative to make progress on natural environment only.

Village chief’s remark on the demographic composition of the workforce still made sense in this textile factory where visual acuity and agile movement of young people were much in demand, and only migrant workers could take up the vacancies resulted from the underrepresentation of young locals. Contrary to popular belief that migrant workers are generally underpaid, the factory owner had to increase salaries frequently to compete with enterprises elsewhere, and he has guaranteed to pay the insurance and retirement allowance for every employee (insufficient supply of skilled workers and high aspirations of college graduates have caused a serious labor shortage in China’s manufacturing sector and many of those entrepreneurs even start to count on robots to do the work).

What I haven’t expected from this interview was the scale and scope of the challenges those small enterprises had to face under the implementation of initiatives addressing environmental protection and industrial transformation. While local officials kept exerting themselves to attract tourists anticipating historical and natural wonders, manufacturing enterprises have been regarded as less coveted, a great many shut down by local authorities hastily. His textile factory was under the same existential threat due to the reason that they couldn’t meet critical environmental requirements to which he believed they will need years to finally comply with. “We started our business in the 90s at a time when the standard of fire protection, environmental preservation and workplace safety haven’t been this strict, but we have always dedicated to new safety and environment regulations and have become a main contributor of tax in this place. Right now, what they are doing is to end your business the instant they find you are not up to the new standard, without giving any grace period for some transition. Some factories invested a million to expand their business last year, now they got to be closed this month.”

Another more concerning issue was how this policy would undercut the well-being of migrant families. This textile factory hired 200 workers, most of whom came from places where few economic opportunities were available. They were able to live close to their workplace with their properties and children settled only because they had a job here. Some of their kids did pretty well at school, coming back to the hinterlands entailed a significant amount of time and effort to fit in, only to compromise their educational prospects. It was worth mentioning that migrant workers in their town were not the first to suffer from this one-size-fits-all solution for environmental protection — “Authorities in the nearby city have closed many factories without allowing employers and workers to opt for gradual change, which unfortunately infuriated plenteous local and migrant workers concerning they might take pains to find a new job as well as a new school for their offspring.”

Recap on China’s grassroots governance and a global moral dilemma

I still remember my last trip to South Korea as the environment division leader for a student forum among some elite East Asian universities, that was when I got to acknowledge the remarkable achievement my government has accomplished in promoting renewable energy and eliminating all sorts of pollution that I had not been aware of (though I had been no stranger to the horrible pollution like every international reader here). China has become a pioneer in harnessing sunlight as well as water and wind for power, accounting for 35.7% installed wind power capacity and 44.3% added capacity on this planet. And from 2008 to 2013, China’s solar-electric panel industry has dropped world prices by 80 percent [1]. Data from NASA satellites also showed 25% of the gains in the global green leave area came from China in the past two decades [2]. And a new study published on Nature Sustainability last summer has suggested that with all these endeavors being taken by Chinese big cities, China might be able to see its carbon emissions peak between 2021–2025, achieving the goal of the Paris Agreement five years earlier[3]. What I had been oblivious of, however, was the price we have to pay to get those policies implemented in a developing country, especially the price on those who get directly or inadvertently impacted. There are more cases beyond the one I mentioned in South Korea — a few years ago, Beijing has launched a blue-sky campaign that planned to ban the use of coal for heating homes and businesses, which did make air quality in Beijing better than ever but also left tens of thousands of people shivering without heat since new furnaces have not got installed after the preceding ones being removed (government officials picked an incremental approach later)[4].

During our limited time in Jiang Village, I haven’t got a chance to talk to other factory owners and village officials about this pressing issue. My sympathy could be a result of selection bias and the story I heard might be a display of exaggeration or even distortion, who knows? Conceived in the belief that fact-checking was an indispensable skill today, I turned to the Internet for a few (psychologically) reliable explanations. Some engineers suggested that our groundwater and soil has been so contaminated that the only sensible idea was to stop all pollution right away, while others pointed out that since large companies had the resources, technology and incentive (tax cut, etc.) to go environmental-friendly and were able to bring about momentous changes, small- and medium-sized enterprises have become the predominant target of this green revolution. And according to some frontline environmental officials, many small businesses were the toughest nut to crack and have been notoriously unwilling to change time after time. I do agree with some of the justifications here, but it is unrealistic to turn a blind eye to the socio-economic turbulence this might engender and how little space is provided for key stakeholders to negotiate and compromise, especially an institutional one. While governments in western democracy grow more responsible about environmental and labor practices because of many decades of activism, investigative journalism, public pressure and debate, a top-down approach is more often (but not always) the case in China — where local officials are held accountable by a set of key performance indicators that used to prioritize economic growth above everything else whereas now put more emphasis on environmental protection and sustainability. Here it is a competition between two sets of philosophies, one advocated by Immanuel Kant and John Rawls that prioritizes autonomy, liberty and pluralism, the other favored by Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Hegel and Nietzsche that elevates an optimal state of living in the name of perfectionism. I would not argue which one is superior to the other since you can find both elements in different countries or at least in different period of their development, while I have been so aware of the pros and cons of both sides if not properly put into practice — in fact, I’ve always been a great critic of certain neoliberal policies that failed ordinary people in the US as well as the third world, and the idea of paternalism and elitism embedded in Chinese politics.

Even if I hate to admit it, there are many things on the news that seem to hurdle further improvement of environmental sustainability and ecological diversity, the most recent one being China set to build more coal power plants in the coming years while reopened a few polluting businesses in the face of the trade war. That being said, this article does not seek to debate on every energy or industrial policy but to offer a perspective from a college student studying in China, a country vast in its territory and diverse in its culture. With no intent to minimize the difference between political institutions and cultural backgrounds, countries in the Global South all have to face the rivalry between environmental protection and economic development. This has become a global moral dilemma when western developed countries want to encourage themselves and the developing world (without whose involvement no meaningful and sustainable changes are possible) to act on climate emergency and global heating (I’ll take The Guardian’s advice to change the discourse we discuss climate issues here), they are often discouraged by the fact that environmental protection is simply one of the several pressing issues for a developing country, if not a trivial one. In the absence of a better (or cheaper) alternative, the latter needs carbon-based economic activities to build more bridges and roads, provide education and jobs, improve sanitation and public health, all of which have been done with fossil fuels in the industrialized world several decades ago.

I would like the end this article with what I learned in a panel discussion on regional responses to global challenges held at Columbia University a few months ago. Jason Bordoff, one of the speakers and a formal senior director on the National Security Council of the Obama Administration, reviewed the progress and retrogression of China’s energy policy, which he identified as one of the “competing priorities” in China. His judgment perfectly sums up this article, environmental policy in China, or more generally in the developing world, has already become a priority since they realize apart from GDP growth, there is a price tag attached to emissions, deforestation, soil depletion, insect biomass and species extinction; but this is not necessarily the single most important issue at all times given the intricacy and complexity of their historical, cultural, political and socio-economic backgrounds. To figure out a solution that is both creative and equitable, our generation needs to find those crazy ones who dare to “think different” and bring together every stakeholder affected by the environmental catastrophe and the endeavor to block it, because this path has never been, and will not be optional.

[1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-china-is-dominating-the-solar-industry/

[2]https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows

[3]Wang, H., Lu, X., Deng, Y. et al. China’s CO2 peak before 2030 implied from characteristics and growth of cities. Nat Sustain 2, 748–754 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41893–019–0339–6

[4]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/world/asia/china-coal-smog-pollution.html