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ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS AND CASE STUDIES: Green Revolutions: A Political Economy Analysis of the Environmental Movement's Impact on a Working Rule of Law in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

Alice Hsieh
Alice Hsieh*
Affiliation:
TRACE International, Annapolis, MD
*
Alice Hsieh, alice.c.hsieh@gmail.com
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Abstract

China has consistently striven toward economic growth at the expense of civil and political rights; however, China faces an impasse as its severe restrictions on civil and political rights threaten to damage its economic growth, a tension that is best illustrated by the environmental movement. With the advent of new technologies, the lack of transparency and public awareness that has allowed corruption to thrive is decreasing. As a result, China is beginning to accept that economic rights may be inextricably linked to environmental rights, and that it must sometimes yield to the latter in order to preserve the former. Specialized environmental courts, created by local courts to manage environmental unrest, are the perfect target for concrete reforms that, if successful, would improve the rule of law in China. Moreover, the centralization of local environmental courts may create the backdoor opportunity that the Central Communist Party needs to pierce local protectionism and advance its sincere interests in both protecting the environment and quelling visible unrest.

Environmental Practice 15:427–440 (2013)

Type
Features
Information
Environmental Practice , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 427 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © National Association of Environmental Professionals 2013 

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