Yellow China Sea in Jiangsu Province is the habitat for globally threatened
birds such as the spotted greenshank and the spoon-billed sandpiper. The
company constructed wetlands in the core zone to protect threatened
shorebirds and established separate areas for fish, fauna, and flora.^53 Another
of its projects has been in the Pearl River estuary, where it is partnering with
city governments to restore mangrove forests and protect bird migration routes
of international significance.
A landscape architect of the firm described the means through which good
environmental practices had been diffused from the US to China:
‘We use our [Geographic Information System] GIS expertise imported from the US
We map the areas and prioritize the sensitive areas. We decide where to put the
wetlands, and where to have the economic development. We have offices in the US
and China, and there’s a cooperative relationship among the staff. We use cutting-
edge American staff and use best practices but stress economic benefits. There
needs to be an economic angle to it to produce revenues for government; otherwise,
they wouldn’t be interested.’^54EDAW occupies a niche market, and shows that profits can be made by
preserving wetlands near heavily populated areas. Its projects in China have
brought recognition from the UN Commission on Sustainable Development
and the American Society of Landscape Architects.^55
CROSS-STRAIT TRADE: A RACE TO THE BOTTOM?
The last area we discuss briefly is the relationship between Taiwan and China
in the evolution of environmental mitigation strategy and policy. The pattern
of trade and investment has been asymmetric, from Taiwan to China, and
this has influenced the diffusion of environmental ideas and practices. The
most significant change occurred in the late 1980s when Taiwan began to
implement the second export-oriented industrialization policy because of the
challenge of cheaper labor in Southeast Asia and China, as well as greater
competition in the world manufacturing market. Government policy then
began to emphasize incentives for conglomerates to expand domestic invest-
ments. The government financed selected medium-sized enterprises to
produce higher value-added products in Taiwan, and it indirectly encouraged
medium and small-size enterprises of sunset industries to move out of
Taiwan.^56
This policy change motivated SMEs to move overseas if they lacked
sufficient capital to invest in pollution abatement equipment. Hsiao notes that
such ‘runaway enterprises’ escaped from domestic environmental regulations
and transferred the social costs of environmental pollution to less developed
countries, primarily China and Southeast Asia states, which either had more
Business organizations and biodiversity conservation 149