Home |
Site Index |
FAQs |
Contact |
RSS
|
Podcast
home > by publication type > academic modules > Academic Module: The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future
Email
April 2004
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
Selected by The Globalist as one of the top ten books of 2004, The River Runs Black is the most comprehensive and balanced volume to date on China’s growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country’s development. Based on historical research, case studies, and interviews with officials, scholars, and activists in China, this book provides insightful analysis of the economic and political roots of China’s environmental challenge as well as the evolution of the leadership’s response.
|
April 2004
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
Selected by The Globalist as one of the top ten books of 2004, The River Runs Black is the most comprehensive and balanced volume to date on China’s growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country’s development.
by Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
China’s spectacular economic growth over the past two decades has brought with it skyrocketing pollution and a dramatic depletion of natural resources. Environmental degradation in China has also contributed to significant public health problems, mass migration, economic losses, and social unrest. The River Runs Black argues that China’s leaders have patterned their environmental protection efforts after reforms that have been largely successful in developing the economy: devolving authority to local officials, opening the door to private actors, and inviting participation from the international community while retaining only weak central control. The result for the environment, however, has been a patchwork of protection. A few wealthy regions with strong leaders and international ties have improved their local environments, but most of the country continues to deteriorate, sometimes suffering irrevocable damage. The book suggests that proactive policies backed by effective local enforcement could still avert an environmental crisis, but that if China does not change course, the implications for the country’s future development are dire. The book concludes by outlining three possible projections for the future: a best-case scenario, a continuation of the status quo, and further environmental deterioration.
The book examines environmental issues in China through a policymaking lens. It is written in a clear style accessible to either undergraduate or graduate students and would be appropriate for use in a broad range of courses focusing on either environmental policy or China.
Courses on International/Comparative Environmental Policy
Discussion Questions
China Studies Courses
The River Runs Black is appropriate for use in an introductory course on contemporary China or in more specialized courses, such as those focusing on China’s foreign policy, domestic politics and policies, economy, or environment.
Discussion Questions
2. China’s foreign policy
3. China’s domestic politics and policies
4. Economic development of China
5. Environmental issues in China
April 20, 2006
Speech
April 19, 2006
| Author: | Stephen Glain |
|---|
Beneath China's outward show of economic strength is an economic, social and environmental upheaval has turned the country into a caldron. For now at least, the Chinese regime is a greater threat to its own population, unmoored and angry, than it is to the United States or even its neighbors.
April 14, 2006
Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
Elizabeth Economy, the Council's senior fellow for Asia, says that when President Hu Jintao of China meets President Bush at the White House next Thursday, the administration would like to see some progress on "sticky security issues" like North Korea and Iran. But she does not expect to see much help from China on these questions.
April 14, 2006
As China grows, its leaders are careful to reassure the world of its peaceful intentions. But Beijing's inexorable rise toward a position of political and economic leadership in Asia and beyond may put China on a collision course with the United States and other nations.
April 5, 2006
Russia and China are signing groundbreaking deals to deliver Russian oil and gas to feed surging Chinese demand. The economic cooperation is also reflected on the political side, where the two nations are joining to counter U.S. influence in Central Asia and around the world.
March 16, 2006
| Author: | Adam Segal, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies |
|---|
March 2006
| Author: | Jerome A. Cohen, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia Studies |
|---|
January 17, 2006
China is increasingly turning to Africa to supply the oil it needs to feed its booming economy. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing is on a six-nation tour in Africa this week to raise China's profile in the region.
June 6, 2008
| Author: | Stephanie Hanson, News Editor |
|---|
Rising global energy demands have caused China to turn to Africa as a major supplier of oil. But Western states still make the vast majority of African investments and remain highly influential.
Winter 2005-06
| Authors: | Flynt Leverett Jeffrey Bader |
|---|
November 11, 2005
Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
October 10, 2005
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
September 21, 2005
| Author: | Robert B. Zoellick |
|---|
Remarks to National Committee on U.S.-China Relations,
New York
As Prepared for Delivery
Some twenty-seven years ago, Chinese leaders took a hard look at their country and didn’t like what they saw. China was just emerging from the Cultural Revolution. It was desperately poor, deliberately isolated from the world economy, and opposed to nearly every international institution. Under Deng Xiaoping, as Mr. Zheng explains, China’s leaders reversed course and decided "to embrace globalization rather than detach themselves from it."
August 2005
China's Economic Problems [And Ours]. David Dollar. The Milken Institute Review, 3d quarter 2005.
China has been a star in the development fi rmament for two decades, managing the largest reduction in poverty in human history and transforming the country into an economic power to be reckoned with. Even if growth slows somewhat – as one would expect when the easy ways to raise productivity are exhausted – it is likely to emerge in the next few decades as both the world’s largest economy and largest trading nation. But China’s transition to a mature economy supporting a high standard of living for its citizens is not a sure thing.
July 6, 2005
Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
February 7, 2005
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
October 22, 2004
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
September 22, 2004
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
September/October 2005
| Author: | Zheng Bijian |
|---|
Summary
Despite widespread fears about China's growing economic clout and political stature, Beijing remains committed to a "peaceful rise": bringing its people out of poverty by embracing economic globalization and improving relations with the rest of the world. As it emerges as a great power, China knows that its continued development depends on world peace -- a peace that its development will in turn reinforce.
September/October 2005
| Authors: | David Zweig Bi Jianhai |
|---|
Summary
Chinese foreign policy is now driven by China's unprecendented need for resources. In exchange for access to oil and other raw materials to fuel its booming economy, Beijing has boosted its bilateral relations with resource-rich states, sometimes striking deals with rogue governments or treading on U.S. turf. Beijing's hunger may worry some in Washington, but it also creates new grounds for cooperation.
May/June 2004
| Author: | Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies |
|---|
Summary
January 18, 2006
| Speakers: | William T Archey, President and Chief Executive Officer, American Electronics Association Adam Segal, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow in China Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; author, Digital Dragon: High-Technology Enterprises in China |
|---|---|
| Presider: | Anne G.K. Solomon, Senior Adviser, technology policy, Center for Strategic and International Studies |
April 10, 2006
| Speaker: | Max Baucus, Member, U.S. Senate (D-MT) |
|---|---|
| Presider: | J. Stapleton Roy, Managing Director, Kissinger Associates, Inc. |
Watch Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and former U.S. Ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy discuss U.S.-Chinese trade relations in light of Chinese President Hu Jintao's upcoming visit to the United States.
March 20, 2006
| Speaker: | Ma Ying-jeou, Mayor, Taipei City |
|---|---|
| Presider: | Jerome A. Cohen, Law Professor, New York University School of Law and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia, Council on Foreign Relations |
Watch Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou talk about the history of Taiwan and the legal status of Taiwan today.
December 15, 2004
| Speakers: | Albert Keidel, Senior Associate, China Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Gordon Chang, Author, The Coming Collapse of China Nicholas R. Lardy, Senior Fellow, Institute for International Economics |
|---|---|
| Presider: | Henry Kaufman, President, Henry Kaufman & Company, Inc. |
November 30, 2005
| Speaker: | Joseph Lieberman, Member, U.S. Senate (D-CT) |
|---|
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at the Council.
After two decades of liberalization, many countries around the world are adopting new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) that could retard continued progress. The authors make recommendations for correcting this protectionist drift by proposing guidelines for how countries can better regulate FDI yet still reap its economic benefits.
In this Council Special Report, the authors make a strong case that the Bush administration’s policy of diplomatic isolation of Syria is not serving U.S. interests, and offer informed history and thoughtful analysis of the country and its external behavior.
Complete list of Council Special Reports.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1-800-537-5487, fax +1-410-516-6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.
Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.
You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
