Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro, China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for A Troubled Planet 

Excerpt

Studying China from an environmental politics perspective is increasingly popular as scholars and environmentalists want to get a better sense of China’s stances on environmental governance and climate change. Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro’s China Goes Green provides a fresh look to the China case by highlighting what they call a model of coercive environmentalism. Although this book examines China’s approach to environmental governance, readers should not underestimate their ambitions because their analysis seeks to articulate not only the environmental implications of the Chinese green state, but also many of the non-environmental consequences of authoritarian environmentalism (p.22). In this case, this book is distinguishable from books on this topic that are focused solely on studying environmental issues in China. In that, Readers may find more political analysis about China’s political system, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and China’s foreign relations. This feature of emphasizing the politics brings mixed results. On the one hand, the authors’ goals of exploring the potential, capabilities and limits of China’s environmental governance model and implications for political life have been achieved. On the other hand, some readers may find the book too complex and abstract. …