hand, by deals struck with governments, multinationals may occasionally
degrade environmental conditions. The activities of the Lin Yuan petro-
chemical complex in Taiwan demonstrate this potential. Yet during Taiwan’s
new democratic era, county residents in Taichung mobilized against what they
saw as an environmentally threatening chemical factory development, and
were able to stop it. The final question pertains to cross-strait trade and its
environmental effects. Most goods, services, and capital travel from Taiwan to
China. Many SMEs have dirtied China’s environment with their polluting
equipment. A smaller number of firms export clean technology to China.
However, the intense trade and FDI flows to China threaten to hollow out
Taiwan’s economy. To the extent the state tries to keep corporations’ ‘roots in
Taiwan’, especially by financial incentives and relaxation of environmental
controls, it worsens Taiwan’s own environment.
In Chapter 7 we examine how ENGOs have developed and operated in both
countries, to curtail or at least limit these adverse environmental
modifications.
ENDNOTES
- Dryzek, John S., David Downes, Christian Hunold, and David Schlosberg with Hans-
Kristian Hernes (2003), Green States and Social Movements, London: Oxford University
Press, p. 11. Dryzek et al. contend that environmental conservation can attach itself to either
of two ‘core interests’ of the modern state: economic development or legitimation. - Qian Yingyi and Barry R Weingast, ‘Institutions, state activism, and economic develop-
ment: a comparison of state-owned and township-village enterprises in China’, in Mashiko
Aoki, Hyung-ki Kim, and Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara (1996), The Role of Government in
East Asian Economic Development, New York Oxford University Press, p. 259. - Scholars do not agree on the exact contribution of different types of enterprises to industrial
output. For instance, Ma and Ortolano give these somewhat different figures: SOEs (28.5
percent), urban collectives (8.2 percent), town-village enterprises (TVEs) (31.1 percent),
small private (15.5 percent), and other (16.6 percent). See Environmental Regulation in
China, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p. 41. - The profitability of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a subject of contention. For example,
Laurenceson and Chai suggest that, although SOEs do not perform as efficiently as non-
state-owned enterprises, nevertheless their economic performance is better than generally
believed. They suffer from incomplete price reform in industries such as energy, fuel and
raw materials, which influences profitability. Also, because they provide benefits to workers
such as pensions, health and child care, and subsidized housing, their costs are higher and
this reduces profitability. See James Laurenceson and J.C.H. Chai (2000), ‘The economic
performance of China’s state-owned industrial enterprises’, Journal of Contemporary
China, 9 (23) (March), 21–39. - At the national level, the situation of SOEs borders on the precarious. Smyth and Zhai’s
review of statistical bureau figures indicates that ‘the debt-asset ratio for the state-owned
sector as a whole in China is 75–80 percent. Media reports suggest that when ‘hidden losses’
are considered, the debt-asset ratio might be as high as 85 percent and that in 30 percent of
China’s loss-making enterprises it is in excess of 100 percent’. See Smyth, Russell and Zhai
Qingguo (2003), ‘Economic restructuring in China’s large and medium-sized state-owned
enterprises’, Journal of Contemporary China, 12 (34), 173–205.
Business organizations and biodiversity conservation 155