Rising of Environmental Awareness in Taiwan and China

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Global East Asia
Robert P. Weller’s Discovering Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan (2006) addresses the rise of environmental consciousness in Taiwan and China both as a product and as a local reaction to globalization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Since the 1980s, there have been rapid changes in environmental awareness in the two countries as well as an increase in transnational interactions that have changed the ways people understand and interrelate with their environments. This essay will discuss at least three specific pieces of evidence of how the environmental awareness in Taiwan and China is the consequence of globalization. While China and Taiwan have markedly different political and economic histories, they have responded in very similar ways to environmental issues caused by the increased economic development over the past few decades. This essay theorizes that the growth of nature tourism, anti-pollution movements, and policy implementation in China and Taiwan demonstrate the influence of globalization on environmental awareness in the two countries.
China and Taiwan experienced many environmental challenges as a consequence of rapid economic development, particularly as a result of the mass industrialization in the 1980s. The socialist revolution in the two countries resulted in many negative environmental consequences. For instance, Vaclav Smil documented the widespread environmental pollution in China extending from unsustainable agriculture to undrinkable water to smog even in sparsely settled rural areas. Taiwan was also experiencing the same issues of environmental degradation from rapid economic development. For instance, the author observes that in the late 1970s, Taiwan placed little focus on environmental conservation beyond the demands of farming: “One study found that thirteen of sixteen major Taiwanese rivers and streams (including Sanxia’s largest river) were seriously polluted in their lower reaches; the others were moderately polluted” (Weller 2006, 49). However, as the author notes later in the book, Taiwan began growing an environmental awareness in the mid-1980s after a long period of environmental degradation. In the mid-1980s, the country reported an increase in environmental demonstrations all over the island in response to ongoing economic activities.
In 1986, Taiwan forced Dupont to forfeit its plans of operating a titanium dioxide plant in Lugang owing to pollution concerns. Despite ongoing issues like open garbage sites, the Taiwanese government was committed to addressing its environmental problems by passing several environmental laws. For instance, the country formed an autonomous Environmental Protection Administration in 1987 after widespread protests against environmental degradation by local and international companies (Weller 2006, 65). Moreover, Taiwan started paying attention to nature, a phenomenon that did not exist in the late 1970s. The island opened four new national parks with amenities rivaling those in developed countries: the national parks boasted excellent support infrastructure and modern exhibits and interpretations. These national parks were well received by the public and became the nation’s biggest local tourist attraction sites, accounting for three of the top five “domestic tourism destination in 1988 and 1990” (Weller 2006, 65). The growth in nature tourism was not restricted to the development of national parks but was also evidence by the opening up of hundreds of private sites, including rural farms using their water buffaloes (which were previously only us...