The Red And The Green: The Environmentalism In China(1949-)

The paper studies the history of the environmentalism in contemporary China since 1949.The paper follows the methods of historical sociology, based on various historical documentation and field investigation, and directed by the theory of the state-society relationship.The basic conclusion of the study is that the environmentalism in contemporary China is a historical progress when the control-dependence legitimacy was being challenged, besieged while being reconstructed, overspread and consolidatedThe frame of the study is as follow. Serious and constant legitimacy challenges at home and abroad enforce both Chinese state and its people to pursue the Catching-up Modernization as the ultimate value. The ecological deficiency in Catching-up Modernization has been causing more and more environmental problems and ecological crisis, which conversely have damaged the legitimacy. To handle and overcome the challenges, series of environmental protection movements as green legitimization are promoted, while the control-dependence between state and society, which the Catching-up Modernization has cast, has been strengthened. Thus, the environmentalism is the movements of reconstructing the green legitimacyThe environmentalism in contemporary China is historically explained in four periods, including the red origin of the green, the green transition of the red, the green breakthrough and the green legitimization of the red. The paper suggests, the state environmentalism is characterized by the combination of administrative decentralization and political centralization, which specifies the ways for the state's internal and external control, and causes government failure. And the paper analyzed in more detail the social environmentalism, including the environmental petitions and environmental disputes, the environmental attitudes and behavior of the elite, the media, environmental NGOs and the enterprises, and large-scale water conservancy works, to explore their mutual and complex interactions with the state, to infer the models of their dependence on the state, and to illuminate the structural causes of social failure or market failure in environmental protection.The paper developed the control-dependence model from the traditional theory, which views the relationship between state and society as control-dependence, as its analytical frame. Besides, various conceptions such as green breakthrough, green legitimacy, ecological deficiency in Catching-up Modernization, polluting triangle, polluting labeling, positive dependence and negative dependence, dependence index and environmental proclamation index of the media, are newly presented. Abundant documents and data are compiled and sorted out statistically for the research, such as, the Annual Number and Typology of Environmental Policy Document of Central Government, the Main Expenditure of the Central and Local Governments on Environment Protection, Annual Environmental Petitions, Annual Number of Polluting Enterprises Closed, Suspended, Combined, and Transferred. And the Environmental Social Network of Administration System, the Environmental Social Network of State System are drawn.Finally, compared with the property right of state or individual, the research has brought forward a new concept——property right of society, conceiving a institutional frame of the positive balance among government, market and society. Thus, both the environmental protection movement and the transition of relation between state and society in China are to be improved harmoniously and efficiently.