Environmental Protection Policy and Experience in the U.S. and China's Western Regions

China is a multiethnic country with vast territory, a land of diverse ecosystems. With the drive for industrialization in China and the implementation of 'western grand development' strategy in western regions, both governments and people face great challenges in environmental protection and sustainable use of biodiversity resources as a result of growing interaction between human activities and natural environment. To meet the challenges, governments in these regions need to adopt a series of important policy measures, not only to reduce industrial emissions, but also to return farmland to forests and pasture to grasslands and to implement measures of ecological migration to reduce human activities in ecological conservation areas. In this regard, China must not only learn profound lessons from industrialized countries but also search for international cooperation. The United States provides some good comparative case studies on the environmental protection, grassroots environmental management, and conservation policies in western regions This book attempts to address key questions about Chinese and U.S. environmental policies by looking at historical development of environmental protection and current environmental policy in the western regions of the two countries.

There is a substantial amount of unique material in this book, and particularly outstanding are the detailed case studies of environmental or environment related social issues in China’s western regions, especially the issue of ecological migration which is approached from different perspectives in two chapters. The book is also valuable for its pioneering work in comparing these two development processes through the lens of environmental issues, which has been neglected by most previous studies, and draws readers’ attention to the environmental aspect of China’s westward development. . . .Overall, this book offers a fresh methodology for researching the environmental issues that have arisen in the process of China’s development from a comparative perspective, and attempts to draw lessons from the US in its westward development more than a century earlier. This book should be read by any serious student interested in China’s environmental politics and policy, comparative environment politics, and China studies broadly construed., The U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen made clear that the fate of the planet rests in large part on the environmental policies of two superpowers, China and the United States. This volume could not be more timely with its analysis and comparison of environmental policy in China and the United States., The strength of this book lies in the contributors' shared and genuine attempt to explore the potential of mutual learning in environmental protection between the United States and China. The comparative case studies included in the volume are coherent as a whole, and highly relevant to the field of environmental politics individually.

Sujian Guo is professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Center for U.S.-China Policy Studies at San Francisco State University, with concurrent appointments as associate dean and distinguished professor at Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences at Fudan University, China. Joel J. Kassiola is dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. Jijiao Zhang is professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and founder and chair of the Commission on Enterprise Anthropology, China.