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China-Based Air Pollution and Epistemic Community Building in the Northeast Asian Region

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Abstract

New technologies are driven principally by need, and paramount among such needs are those which are framed by environmental disasters. In Northeast Asia, trade winds blow west to east, so anything airborne in China remains airborne in some fashion in Korea, Japan, parts of Russia, and beyond. Thus, the increase of Chinese air pollution as well as the yellow sand/dust which exacerbates the transfer of pollutants is both a domestic and international concern. This paper assesses the effects of the East Asian Acid Deposition Monitoring Network (EANET) to mitigate pollution blowing out of mainland China, focusing especially on the creation and fostering of an epistemic community of scientists and engineers. All of the affected countries are high-technology producers, and the cross-national connections which are fostered through R&D efforts are a crucial complement to multilateral agreements such as EANET. The primary research questions to be considered, thus, are as follows: How are scientists and researchers across the region constrained in their efforts to address the increasingly devastating effects of China-based air pollution? To what extent are domestic political factors thwarting efforts to establish an epistemic community? At the same time, and to provide a truly complete picture of international R&D beyond scientist and researcher connections, what policies – in China, in neighboring countries, and across countries in the region – will incentivize R&D to address China-based air pollution? This study employs a mixed methods approach to answer these questions, integrating patent data, publication data, and interview-based data which draws upon the experiences of scientists and researchers, a group that has typically been considered tangential to institutions of international relations related to the environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The effects of China-originating yellow dust and soot are felt even in the USA, where cities like Los Angeles receive one extra day of pollution per year from China’s production of goods for export (Lin et al. 2014).

  2. 2.

    Even under these strict targets, EANET has not been free of politicisation. China was reluctant to join EANET initially, as its leaders correctly assumed that the group would exert pressure on China to cooperate with its neighbors to reduce pollution (Tsunekawa 2005). And Korea, in order to counter the hegemony of Japan in fostering EANET, founded the Joint Research Project on Long-rang Transboundary Air Pollutants in Northeast Asia (Yoshimatsu 2014).

  3. 3.

    Chinese citizens also use social media to share images about air pollution in Beijing, including posts from celebrities (Gardiner 2014), prompting acknowledgement of the problem by public officials.

  4. 4.

    In Korea, the urban population is even more concentrated: 82 % of the Korean population is urban-based, amounting to 41.2 million people (World Bank 2015).

  5. 5.

    A classic example of how this has occurred is the 1987 Montreal Protocol. Studies conducted in the pre-Montreal Protocol period showed that international controls on chlorofluorocarbons would help protect the ozone layer. This argument founded the efforts of a transnational epistemic community of atmospheric scientists to influence the positions of the UNEP and the USA (Haas 1990).

  6. 6.

    Included here are those patents dealing with electric or electrostatic field (e.g., electrostatic precipitation, etc. [class/subclass: 95/57+]) and liquid contacting (e.g., sorption, scrubbing, etc. [class/subclass: 95/149+]).

  7. 7.

    This may not be inappropriate given the impact of yellow dust-related pollution on the west coast of the USA (Fischer et al. 2009).

  8. 8.

    From the first group, specialists were interviewed from KEEI, the University of Science and Technology, Yonsei University, Seoul National University (2), Sejong University, Chung-Ang University and the KDI Graduate School. From those recommended by commission members, those interviewed are from the KDI Graduate School, STEPI (2), KISTEP, KETEP, GTCK, KEMCO, Jeju Technopark, KRIED and KEITI (interviewed together), Seoul National University and Dongguk University.

  9. 9.

    Note that ‘air pollution’ was the most appropriate proxy for yellow dust-related patenting output; the search for ‘yellow dust’ or ‘transboundary pollution’ yielded virtually no results in the USPTO’s patent search engine.

  10. 10.

    For ease of exposition, the focus of an individual country is representative of the focus of that country’s research community.

  11. 11.

    Declines in the most recent years are not evidence of declining patenting activity but, rather, represent the lag time required for patents to move from ‘application’ to ‘issued’ status.

  12. 12.

    Air pollution-related information has in fact been distorted by the Chinese government (Ravetti et al. 2014), although such practices seem to have ended (at least in Beijing) in 2012 (Stoerk 2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3301 S Dearborn, SH116, 60616, Chicago, IL, USA

    Matthew A. Shapiro

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Michelle Ann Miller

  2. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Michael Douglass

  3. Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), United Nations University Bonn, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Matthias Garschagen

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Shapiro, M.A. (2018). China-Based Air Pollution and Epistemic Community Building in the Northeast Asian Region. In: Miller, M., Douglass, M., Garschagen, M. (eds) Crossing Borders. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6126-4_13

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