Transformation of the rainforest in Yunnan province into rubber plantations
denuded the soil, encouraged overhunting and deforestation. Not only were
these examples of the disastrous consequences of large, poorly planned, and
hurried development projects; they also represent the adverse impacts on the
environment of those (such as the lost generation of rusticated youth) who had
lost their sense of place.
China’s imperial tradition, Shapiro’s study concludes, was not environ-
mentally benign, and the Soviet Union influenced China’s post-revolutionary
leaders to construct huge projects without attention to environmental costs.
However, Mao and the Chinese communist system accelerated environmental
degradation: ‘Maoism constructed a world that pitted humans against nature,
and inculcated this world view among the people through repression,
indoctrination, utopian promises, and censorship’.^30
Shapiro finds the Maoist era to be both unique and ‘an extreme and
revealing example of a general pattern ... the transparency of the link between
human political repression and the effort to conquer nature by portraying and
treating it as an enemy’.^31 China’s current leaders inherit this legacy with all its
eco-destructive ramifications.
ECONOMIC REFORM IN DENG’S CHINA
The rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping to power at the third meeting of the
Eleventh Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1979 was a
pivotal event in China’s economic reform. In contrast to the Maoist practice of
political dominance, Deng gave first priority to economic development, which
would require rapid restoration of the country’s political and economic
institutions and abolition of the commune system in agriculture. Deng also
retreated from class struggle and mass movements as methods of policy
implementation. The ultimate goals of Deng’s reforms were: (1) to correct
dislocations among supply, production, and marketing by downward transfer
of authority to enterprise units; (2) to curb egalitarian tendencies by linking
rewards to performance and using material incentives; (3) to give local
authorities greater powers in the areas of economic planning, capital
construction, materials management and foreign trade; and (4) to introduce
private ownership and market mechanisms in the socialist system to stimulate
greater productivity and efficiency.^32 (Chapters 4 and 6 discuss the reforms in
greater detail.)
Reforms also addressed China’s population problems. In 1979, China
introduced the one-child family policy, which is the single most important
reduction of environmental stress to have occurred globally in the past
generation. The policy was designed primarily for urban areas, where there
28 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan