Sustainability, lifestyle, and consumption in Asia 5initiatives in an attempt to move toward “ecological modernization” (Dent 2014, p.
57) and has sought increasingly to brand itself as a major player in the green global
economy. As Zhang puts it, “China is aggressively tying its dominance in future
global politics to ambitious climate initiatives, and tactically allying its climate
actions with international partners from different sectors” (2015, p. 330). However,
while in 2008, when the central government boosted its environmental protection
agency into a dabui or “super-ministry” (Li and Lang 2010), attempts to implement
ecological modernization through a green gross domestic product (which includes
the real cost of environmental damage and pollution) saw major pushback from
many local governments fearful of the economic impact (Li and Lang 2010).
At the level of civil society, China offers a complex picture of, on the one hand,
an emerging “green public sphere” (Yang and Calhoun 2007), with Geall arguing
that investigative journalism and micro-blogging have brought some degree of
accountability into China’s environmental decision making (2013). On the other hand,
Zhang and Barr note China’s tendency toward “authoritarian environmentalism”
(2013, p. 853). They argue, however, that a top-down conception of China’s green
governance doesn’t quite capture the complex dynamics of Chinese social activism,
where “a system of ‘symbiosis’ is emerging as unlicensed civil actors are tolerated
so long as they refrain from calling for wholesale political reform whilst addressing
social needs that help relieve pressure on the government” (Zhang and Barr 2013,
p. 853). This does not mean, however, that green activists are in any way duped
by government; rather, as Zhang argues in relation to the air pollution movement
(discussed in chapter 8 of this book), many of these figures can be seen as “climate
sceptics” who work reflexively and strategically with government:
These sceptics [sic] do not challenge the validity of climate science per se,
nor do they dismiss the necessity for collective undertaking. Rather, this
discourse is highly suspicious of the social cost of climate agendas set by
Western as well as Chinese state sponsored hegemonies
(Zhang 2015, p. 333)In terms of lifestyle and consumption, given China’s large and growing urban
middle class, there has also been increasing interest in “green” and “ethical”
consumer markets in China. A survey of consumers conducted in 2007–2008
found that 31 per cent of Chinese consumers identify the environment as a higher
priority than the economy, significantly higher than consumers in the United States
(17 per cent), while the survey also found that Chinese consumers’ opinions about
environmentalism were tied to broader concerns about corporations and their
practices rather than personally engaging in “lifestyle” practices such as recycling
(China Daily 2008).
While such broad-brush-stroke, quantitative surveys have major limitations,
these kinds of findings point to the way in which “environmental consciousness”
in China, and in other parts of Asia, has a distinct flavor, situated as it is within the
context of specific cultural, political, economic, and governmental trajectories.
Across the region, civil society and consumer movements are emerging that