This volume has also analyzed the challenges to biodiversity conservation
presented by each system. Protected areas in both jurisdictions have large
problems of administrative organization and co-ordination, because several
agencies have missions in land-use management and these missions often
conflict. Problems of financing PAs are far greater in China than in Taiwan,
because of obvious differences in national wealth. Moreover, China has far
greater problems of finding suitable human resources and training of PA staff
than does Taiwan, reflecting not only differences in economic development
but the more limited spread of secondary and post-secondary education in
China.
The two systems also differ in their treatment of local populations and
minority cultures (which are more in evidence at the periphery of the states).
China’s approach remains authoritarian and top-down, and it has not endorsed
co-management of PAs with minority populations; Taiwan is edging toward
a co-management strategy. This difference is largely explained by the political
value of even small populations, such as Taiwan’s aborigines, in a democratic
context.
Although, on most counts, the system of PAs in China is inferior to that in
Taiwan, it has also expanded extremely rapidly (most growth occurred in the
1990s and early twenty-first century). A high-level task force has studied the
system and its flaws, and its critical report, China’s Protected Areas,^1 may
prompt comprehensive change. One can hope for systematic improvements in
this large and untidy system.
Since the most significant threat to species and habitats today is economic
development, we have considered briefly the economic structures of China
and Taiwan, and the incentives they give for business firms to reduce or
increase pressures on the environment. The economic role of state-owned
enterprises (SOEs) has declined in both China and Taiwan, yet some, such as
oil/gas corporations, hydropower corporations, and utilities, continue to pose
large threats to ecosystems in both states (as noted in discussion of the Binnan
and Nujiang cases in the conclusion to this summary). Small and medium-size
enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan and town-and-village enterprises (TVEs) in
China, which are today’s engines of growth and development, would appear to
be easier to control by states. Yet the decentralization of power to provinces
and local governments increases opportunities for even small firms to engage
in environmentally destructive behavior.
Multinational corporations are a smaller sector of the economies in both
China and Taiwan; nevertheless, because of their capital and advanced
technology, they have been important sources for the diffusion of global
environmental standards and technology. We have examined examples of
positive diffusion through the activities of Shell and EDAW in China, while
the Lin Yuan petrochemical complex represented negative diffusion, and
Conclusions 223