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For decades, tree planting and forestry have been pivotal to Chinese environmentalism. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid increases in industrial production, the "Greening the Motherland" campaign promoted conservationist tree-planting nationwide. Contested Environmentalisms explores the seemingly contradictory rhetoric and desires of Chinese conservation from the early twentieth century through to the present.
Drawing on literary, cinematic, scientific, archival, and digital media sources, Cheng Li investigates the emergence, evolution, and devolution of Chinese conservationist ideas. Combining literary, historical, and environmental studies approaches, he shows that these ideas acquired their value and assumed their power precisely because of their malleability and adaptability. Li historicizes authoritarian environmentalism and probes the global-local dynamics underlying conservationist ideas that energize environmental impulses in China. Examining ethnic borderlands, the Beijing political center, and China's growth on the world stage, this book demonstrates the strength of Chinese environmentalism to adapt and survive through tumultuous change lies in what seems to be a weakness: its inconsistency and contestation.
"Contested Environmentalisms is an utterly original, creative, and compelling study of the advent of conservationist consciousness in modern China and its entwinement with China's struggle for modernity, ideological rationale, ethnic settlement, and the natural environment throughout the twentieth century. Li takes an unusual protagonist—trees—in modern Chinese literature and uncovers a rich, fascinating, interdisciplinary and layered history of how arboreal modernity figures at the heart of China's ecological awareness and assertions. In an era of eco-consciousness and fragmenting global culture, this is a vital read." —Jing Tsu, Yale University
"Cheng Li has gifted us a brilliant account of the ecological, political, economic, psychological, and aesthetic dimensions to China's ever-evolving relationship with trees. Contested Environmentalisms offers a novel perspective that will excite anyone interested in modern China. The book will also inspire scholars in fields ranging from forestry to the environmental humanities. I expect Contested Environmentalisms to provoke many robust discussions, in the classroom and beyond. A tour-de-force." —Rob Nixon, Princeton University
"This is a timely and useful book, showing the deeper and multiple roots of China's modern environmentalism. By combining scientific texts, policy documents, films and literature, Li brings multiple perspectives on China's modern environmental voices. This helps fill in key gaps and explain the paradoxes that have made China both the world's leading polluter and a leading agent for environmental protection." —Ian M. Miller, The China Quarterly
"Through his historical investigation, which spans from the early twentieth century to the present, Cheng Li convincingly offers a broad panorama of how the idea of forest conservation took root in China, within a climate of intense political, ethnic, literary, and economic contestation." —Ming-Zhong Chen, China Perspectives
"Li's work successfully illuminates the plurality of environmental discourses that have surrounded tree planting in twentieth- and twenty-first-century China. The book also expands the range of source materials on environmental thought, offering readers a foundation for further exploration." —Wen-Yi Huang, H-Environment
"[Contested Environmentalisms] succeeds particularly well in showing that ideas around trees and forests are flexible and have served multiple purposes—from modern nation building to revolutionary socialism to contemporary capitalist consumer engagement." —Brian Spivey, History: Reviews of New Books
"Cheng Li's Contested Environmentalisms is a substantial theoretical contribution to the field of Chinese environmental studies and history." —Kyuhyun Han, Journal of Chinese History
"Contested Environmentalisms is an elegant and pathbreaking work that will be essential reading for scholars seeking to understand not only China's environmental past but also the entangled present and possible futures of politics, economy, and culture." —Ruisheng Zhang, Environmental History
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Arbor Day: The Rise and Fall of China's Environmentalism in the Republican Era (1912–49)
2. Selling the Forestry Revolution: The Rhetoric of Afforestation in Socialist China (1949–61)
3. Marching into the Desert: Planting Ethnic Borderlands in Mao-Era Ecocinema
4. Deweaponizing Forests and Engineering Nature: Militarization, Coming-of-Age Stories, and Science Fiction in the Mao Era
5. Great Green Awakening: Ecological Science and Chinese Conservation Literature of the 1980s
Coda: Arbor Day Is Every Day!: Virtual Arbor Day and Consumer Environmentalism
Notes
Bibliography
Index