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Environmental Civil Society Organizations and the State in China: Institutional Analysis of the Dynamics, 1980s-2010s

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Abstract

The answer to the oft-asked question of state-civil society relations and the latter’s role in environmental governance in China seems to be “in the eyes of the beholder.” A number of discrepant accounts, narratives, and theories continue to be offered by China scholars and experts, largely due to methodological reliance on a snapshot of a given space and time. This article takes a different approach. Based on a more nuanced longitudinal analysis, we show that there have been at least three kinds of relationship between the Chinese state and environmental civil society in the last few decades, each defined by a distinct institutional field. The dynamics of these institutional changes have been anything but linear or predetermined. This article contributes to the existing debate by offering a more systematic and analytical account of the nature of state-society relations in China’s environmental governance. Findings also point to the need for more dynamic and evolutionary, rather than static, analyses in future scholarship.

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Data Availability

Due to the sensitive nature of the research, supporting data cannot be made publicly available.

Notes

  1. For maximum protection of the research subjects, all interviews were recorded using alphanumeric codes only. We disclose the names of the interviewees or their affiliations only when permissions were attained or when the information is gathered from—and thus readily available in—the public domain. Each interview is given a unique code using month, day, and year. When more than one interview was conducted on a given date, the year is followed by an alphabet letter (e.g., a, b, c) to assign a unique identification. Therefore, it is possible to ascertain whether the interviews quoted in this article are from the same source or different sources.

  2. In this article, we use such terms as “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs), “civil society organizations” (CSOs), and “non-state organizations” (NSOs) interchangeably. Although there may be important conceptual differences between them, such an issue is outside the scope of this paper. Technically, there is no authentic NGO in China, and debates over definitional issues have not led to much advancement in our understanding.

  3. See, e.g., O’Rourke [77] in the case of Vietnam.

  4. Autonomy and capacity may be two analytically distinct variables. Indeed, their definitions and relationships remain contested in the literature [e.g., [95]. Notwithstanding its importance, this issue is not critical to our analysis. Hence, we choose to liberally use these two concepts.

  5. See, e.g., Immergut [50] for an overview of different schools of institutionalism.

  6. This is one of the main differences between traditional social protest theories such as “political opportunity structure” [54] and new institutional theories. The former generally follows the traditional structural determinism.

  7. See Arthur [1] for a theoretical discussion of the role of historical accidents in path dependence.

  8. China MEE. Accessed May 15, 2022. http://english.mee.gov.cn/About_MEE/History/.

  9. For instance, its illegal scaling of Mount Rushmore in July 2009 ahead of the G8 summit.

  10. For instance, compare this incident to the case of the same organization’s behavior in the 2010s detailed below in Section VII.

  11. China, however, did create new entities in the 2000s such as the Energy Bureau and State Energy Administration underneath NDRC.

  12. Lack of reliable data makes it difficult to say with complete certainty.

  13. Some of them had existed before but without much influence, and some of them were new entrants [91].

  14. When it felt challenged, the Chinese state was ruthless in penalizing, especially against Chinese citizens. For instance, in 2005, the Chinese authorities honored Wu Lihong as one of the top environmentalists in the country for his work on pollution in Lake Taihu. Yet, the following year, when he seemed to have crossed the boundaries, he was beaten by local thugs and arrested by the local government in Yixing (Jiangsu) on dubious charges.

  15. cf. Fu [33], who shows underground activities in a different policy area: labor.

  16. e.g., its mayor training program on low-carbon transition and smart city.

  17. The designation means that failure to meet such targets would automatically nullify all achievements for a given local official in a given year.

  18. It was reported in 2017 that 170 million units of such cameras were already in place across the country (BBC [3]).

  19. Anecdotal evidence suggests that effects on many international NGOs—and on domestic CSOs as well—have been devastating so far (Interview, March 16, 2018). In more extreme cases—which are reportedly becoming increasingly common—international CSOs are vilified as potential spies sent by foreign forces [55, 59].

  20. In China, too, there have been provocative cases in recent years in which domestic CSOs such as Friends of Nature have brought class action public interest lawsuits against even government actors. What is interesting is that often such actions are endorsed or legitimatized by the same processes of formalization and rationalization induced by the Chinese state that seem constraining. They show a glimpse of potential to test and redraw the boundaries of the state-society relationship.

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of the Center for ESG Research at NTHU—especially Chan-Yuan Wong, Ker-Hsuan Chien, Pei-Yu Chien—and members of the Asian Social Transformation Thematic Research Team at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica for valuable comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this article. These institutions and individuals do not represent or endorse the views and findings presented in this article. All errors are ours alone.

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  1. Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, No. 101, Sec. 2, Kuang-Fu Rd., 30013, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Kyoung Shin & Tingting Zhu

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Table 3

Table 3 Descriptive statistics of interviews, 2008–2021
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Shin, K., Zhu, T. Environmental Civil Society Organizations and the State in China: Institutional Analysis of the Dynamics, 1980s-2010s. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 28, 449–482 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-023-09848-0

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