Description
Book SynopsisAuthoritarianism, capitalism and destruction: why China is leading the world to ecocide
Trade Review'Tracing China's environmental collapse to the Communist strategy of growth at all cost, this book deepens our understanding of China's massive impact on human sustainability. A bold, independent and necessary voice!'
-- Ching Kwan Lee, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
'In this brilliant and strikingly original book, which has no equivalent in the existing literature on China, Richard Smith argues that the present hybrid bureaucratic-collectivist capitalist Chinese economy, driven by 'blind growth' and consumerism, is as unsustainable and ecocidal as its Western capitalist rivals. For both, the time for half measures has passed: only ecosocialism can save the planet, i.e. humanity, from environmental collapse.'
-- Michael Löwy, author of 'Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to the Capitalist Catastrophe' (Haymarket, 2010)
'Compassionate and powerful, Richard Smith envisions a new Chinese Dream through achieving a harmonious coexistence between human and nature. The book argues for a 21st Century ecosocialist democracy by calling for a "better mode of life" in China and the world.'
-- Jenny Chan, Assistant Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
'A work of real insight. Richard Smith penetrates the defences of a fiercely autocratic regime to reveal how China’s predatory development strategy is imperilling not just itself but our entire planet.'
-- William F. Laurance, Distinguished Research Professor, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, James Cook University, Australia and Singapore
'Analysing the relationship between the Chinese elite and capitalism is not simple … Smith is pointing us in the right direction'
-- The Ecologist
'A useful primer for leftists on China’s role in the current ecological crisis'
-- New Bloom
'Stunning'
-- Counterpunch
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Names of Rivers in this Volume
Introduction: China as an Environmental Rogue State
1. The “China Price”: Police-State Capitalism and the Great Acceleration of Global Consumption
2. “Blind Growth”: Scenes of Planetary Destruction from the Twelfth Five-Year Plan
3. The Damage Done: The Poisoning of China’s Water, Soil, and Foods
4. Cooking the Planet for What End?
5. China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse
6. Guanxi and the Game of Thrones: Wealth, Property, and Insecurity in a Lawless System
7. Grabbing the Emergency Brake
8. The Next Chinese Revolution
Appendix
References
Index
