The greying of greenspeak? 107the only channel in China dedicated to lifestyle television, regularly features tips
on how to bu (replenish) the body to strengthen it against external invasions
of germs, bacteria, and viruses. Broadcasting from Monday to Friday at 7:00
p.m., the show is the most popular consumer guide on where and what to eat
in Shanghai. On March 5, 2014, an episode of Popular Eats takes consumers to
a restaurant that specializes in seahorse soup. The host gives a microphone to
the chef, who proceeds to tell viewers about the medicinal value of seahorses as
a tonic. Conspicuously missing from the conversation is the fact that a number
of seahorse species have long been listed by environmental protection bodies
as threatened and endangered, largely due to unsustainable harvesting, and that
China, with its long-standing tradition of consuming seahorses for their supposed
medicinal value, constitutes the biggest market for seahorses.
Environmental issues provide a new prism through which individuals negotiate
their respective sense of who they are and how they should live their lives as
citizens and consumers. These examples from lifestyle shows on Chinese television
point to a cacophony of moral and ethical voices in contestation and negotiation.
At the same time, even though it is impossible to generalize across the board, it
does seem that self-protecting and self-preserving discourses in popular lifestyle
media, especially on topics of yangsheng (nurturing life)—the most popular
topic in lifestyle programs, which attract the biggest audience group on Chinese
television—cast into doubt the reach and efficacy of greenspeak in China. Lifestyle
advice makes up the bulk of China’s television content, and the shows command
high ratings in comparison with news and current affairs. Yet despite its potential to
present itself as an environmentally friendly pedagogic space in the media, lifestyle
advice as we currently know it is more charged with the discursive task of assisting
individuals in their self-governing efforts aimed at self-protection and less burdened
with introducing consumption practices associated with environmental messages
and ethical consumption. In the absence of the party-state’s intervention, market
forces—through the regime of ratings—play a crucial role in determining and
shaping lifestyle content. Consequently, environmentalist messages have a chance
to get through only when it is believed that they may boost ratings.
Commodifying the concept of green
Yang and Calhoun identify the key dimensions of a green public sphere as
consisting of “an environmental discourse or greenspeak; publics that produce and
consume greenspeak; and media used for producing and circulating greenspeak”
(2007, p. 212). If we are to assess the extent to which such a green public sphere
exists, it is not enough just to look at ways in which the media produce narratives
and discourses. We also need to ask to what extent the green concept has
infiltrated the market and how it has informed people’s consumption practices.
Equally important, we need to make careful distinction between “greenspeak”
and “greenwash”. While the former refers to green narratives that have genuine
environmentalist messages to promote, the latter describes deceptive marketing
strategies that use green discourses to promote products and services.