Index IntroductionThe Environmental Status of ChinaGlobal Threat or Global Peace?ConclusionIntroductionAfter three decades of exceptional economic growth, China has become a global economic power. As the economy has grown, however, so have China's environmental challenges, causing enormous socioeconomic consequences for China and the rest of the world. The global financial crisis pushed China to create greater domestic consumer demand and carry out massive infrastructure construction. Despite China's many efforts to protect the environment and improve resource use efficiency, increasing environmental pollution and resource scarcity have become a serious obstacle to sustainable development. Because of China's size, these and other challenges and opportunities have enormous implications for the world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Environmental State of China Traditional Chinese culture, known as Confucianism, pits humans against nature. This notion is articulated in popular language that “man must triumph over nature.” There is evidence of environmental governance that can be traced back to at least the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Book of Rites according to which local officials were responsible for protecting local rivers, mountains, forests, and animals. Confucian teachings also call for respect for nature, while other Chinese spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism and Taoism, advocate a harmonious relationship between people and nature. The Father of the Nation; Maoist policies have left three important marks on the current state of environmental governance in China. First, the development-first mentality remains highly influential, both among government officials and the general public, in shaping attitudes towards environmental protection. Only recently has environmental protection moved to the forefront of China's political agenda. Second, political decentralization and the nomenklatura system continue to encourage strong competition among local officials, which has contributed to rapid economic growth. Third, Maoist campaign-style governance is still prevalent in today's environmental management practices. China's modern environmental state was born in the 1970s. In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment met in Stockholm, with China as a new member. In August 1973, China's State Council (the Cabinet) convened the country's first national conference on environmental protection. Already in the 1970s the central government recognized the pitfalls of the development path followed by previously industrialized countries. The 1973 Decision's emphasis on ex ante prevention of pollution, rather than ex post abatement, represented a sea change in China's approach to environmental governance and demonstrated the central leadership's awareness of the problems associated with the modality." pollute first, check later." the development of China's environmental status. The first was the rapid promulgation of laws, policies and regulations regarding environmental protection; and the second was the expansion of China's bureaucracy in charge of environmental protection. As mentioned above, China's first national environmental protection law, formally titled the Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, was passed by the National People's Congress (NPC) in 1979. Among its many provisions, the law allows local governments to pass their own lawsown laws, policies and regulations on environmental protection. Subsequently, in the following decades, dozens of national laws and hundreds of local regulations were adopted. As of 2016, China has 20 national environmental laws passed by the NPC, nearly 200 national environmental regulations issued by the State Council, and over 1,000 local environmental regulations. Environmental regulations adopted by local people's congresses. In addition to powerful bureaucracies, state-owned enterprises also have substantial influence in the environmental policy-making process. Indeed, much of China's energy sector is still dominated by a small number of large companies. For example, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) together account for 72% of the country's annual crude oil production, 75% of its annual refined oil production, and nearly 90% of its annual production of natural gas. extraction. [endnoteRef:8] Thus, state-owned enterprises have often been able to use their outsized political influence to reshape energy regulations or simply ignore them. Market-based environmental governance: Since the late 1980s, there has been a gradual shift away from a command-and-control style of environmental regulation; the type characterized by technological mandates for the adoption of more market-based policy tools. When the environmental sector is governed through market mechanisms, the basic principle is the creation of economic incentives for specific political actions. Examples include putting a price on pollution through Pigouvian taxes or cap-and-trade programs, as well as providing compensation for ecosystem maintenance. services. Over the past three decades, China has initiated several waves of policy experimentation as part of an effort to reduce SO2 emissions using pollution trading systems. The first phase of emissions trading development occurred between 1990 and 1994, during which pilot trading programs were established in six countries. city. Subsequently, during the tenth period (2001-2005), it inaugurated the 4+3+1 program by selecting four provinces, three cities and one company to take part in a pilot program for trading SO2 emissions, the most up-to-date assessment of China's SO2 trading programs. China's experience with the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, in which rich countries invest in low-carbon projects in developing countries to claim carbon credits. Under the direction of the NDRC, China has participated in more CDM projects than all other developing countries combined. In the case of China's carbon markets, policy development has been extremely rapid. Carbon emissions trading first entered China's foreign policy in 2010. The following year, the NDRC approved seven pilot programs in five cities and two provinces, and by 2014, all programs had become operational. Finally, after less than two years of testing the pilot program, the central government announced plans to implement a national carbon trading scheme in 2017. In addition to adopting emissions trading schemes to tackle pollution, China has established large-scale payments for ecosystem services. (PSE). Of these efforts, the Grain for Green program, also known as Farmland to Forest and Sloping Land Conversion, is the most notable example [endnoteRef:12]The Grain for Grain initiative reserves sloping farmland with payments payable in cash or grain in order to protect the forests surrounding the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. According to official statistics, at the end ofAs of 2013, more than 100 million farmers had participated in the program, with approximately 25.8 million hectares of cropland successfully converted to forest. During the 2013 meetings of the NPC and the National People's Political Consultative Conference, the State Council unveiled plans to reorganize various ministries and streamline their responsibilities. In September 2016, the power to appoint city-level EPB directors was transferred from city governments to provincial EPBs, although city “approval” was still needed to confirm nominees. If all goes according to plan, this new rule will make local EPB directors much more accountable to vertical oversight. Global threat or global peace? According to the notion of power structure transformation, as a state becomes richer and more powerful, it will inevitably seek greater political influence regionally and then globally, which will cause a change in the power structure in the region and the world. The change in the power structure caused by the rise of a new regional and global power usually represents a long-term danger to the security of the region and also to the stability of the world. According to the power structure analysis, China poses a threat to the security of the East Asian region and the United States and its main ally in East Asia, Japan. Therefore, Asia is likely to see more international conflicts in the near future. For Lemke and Warner (1996), war is more likely when the power of a rising, dissatisfied country becomes equal to that of a dominant state, the United States, in this country. case. So equal power offers the opportunity to take action for those committed to changing the status quo. The phenomenon has been applied to China as an emerging power seeking to change the status quo in the East Asian region. Furthermore, China's desire to make changes to the international status quo can be explained by China's historical memory of past greatness and desire to regain its status as the Middle Kingdom; his determination to erase the painful legacy of a century of national humiliation; his desire to recreate the traditional Sino-centric world order as a means of regulating the world's political and economic structures; and his belief that China's external security in the past was ensured primarily by a strong state. On the other hand, given the dramatic increase in its economic development, China has begun to modernize its military since the 1970s, largely by importing advanced weapons from abroad. This has led many observers to argue that China will not only seek hegemony in East Asia, particularly its territorial claims over the South China Sea, but will also assert its influence in the global sphere, which will most likely bring the U.S. to counterbalance the situation. China's assertiveness, and if this situation were to persist, a hegemonic war would be on the horizon. Although many scholars have expressed their pessimistic views on the threat of China's rise on global security, others who belong to the liberal group positively view China's rise as an opportunity for global economic cooperation and international peace. Friedman (1999), for example, states that a new international system, globalization, has now clearly replaced the Cold War. Globalization, the integration of markets, finance and technologies in a way that is shrinking the world from a medium size to a small size, allows each of us to reach the world further, faster and more.