Mike Lebowitz asks: >I really would like to hear more about (a) that core of >principled eco-socialists and (b) those militant anti- >pollution movements. JG: With regard to (a), I was thinking mainly of Pan Yue (the director of the Environmental Ministry) and his acolytes. The bureau he heads is small and toothless, but from interviews I've seen conducted with him he holds steadfast to the position that the ruination of China's air, soil, and water and the undermining of its people's health is bad in and of itself -- i.e. crimes against ecology and humanity -- not because it compromises GDP growth, which is the more conventional stance, including that preferred by mainstream environmental economists in the Euro-American world. Ironically, I have witnessed said environmental economists (and environmental sociologists) of the Brundtland Commission occasion heap praise upon Pan Yue because they think he validates their commitments to a sustainable capitalism (and all the intellectual prestige, research grants, travel opportunities, etc. they derive from such a commitment), but in fact I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest that he has something more radical in mind (which should tell doubters out there that I'm not a one-dimensional CCP basher, I acknowledge it for the multi-faceted creature it is). As far as (b) goes, the US bourgeois press has been steadily reporting for at least two years that an increasing proportion of Chinese social unrest has to do with the refusal of local cadres/red entrepreneurs to shutter noxious plants; on many occasions when protestors get impatient with polite petitioning they take matters into their own hands, i.e. they resort to violent direct action. Of course the NYTimes and the WashPo have their own agenda when it comes to reporting this stuff (China has no rule of law! no independent judiciary! no electoral competition! blah blah blah, used to further open the PRC to Wall Street), but I have little doubt as to its empirical veracity. I don't follow the issue as closely as I could or should but the latest impressive episode was the massive (mostly peaceful) demonstration in Xiamen against the planned construction of paraxylene-producing chemical plant. Check it out:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZsAohsqiE Dale Wen and Minqi Li also have a pretty fair piece in the 2007 Socialist Register... _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan
