Review: ‘In Search of Green China’ By Ma Tianjie

A human and political story and an environmental history, this surprisingly compact volume offers a readable overview of the most important environmental transformation in history: that of mainland China over the past thirty years. Presented in six chronological sections that each drill down into an area such as water pollution or hydroelectric dams, it manages to provide a nuanced, objective portrait of the complexities of environmental advocacy and policy, but with the plot twists of a modern thriller.

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The author, Ma Tianjie, is a well-known Chinese environmental activist and reporter and former director of the influential China Dialogue in Beijing, an independent non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a common understanding of China’s environmental challenges.

Ma was himself present for many of the pivotal events described in the book; anyone interested in environmental issues in China would be forgiven for coveting his contact list. But he stays in the background, with each section of the book described through the lens of a particular player such as a photographer, an activist, or a politician. These personalities grow in importance over the course of the book as the scope of environmentalism expands from local quibbles to global issues requiring state-level, multinational intervention. 

The book opens with the “cat-and-mouse drama” of the Huai River in the first part of the 1990s, and the battle to manage the toxic effluent created by small wheat-straw paper mills and larger enterprises like Lotus MSG. This early conflict between industry, economic development, state policy, and the monitoring role of independent press, sets the tone for the following chapters. Recurring themes include an examination of Liang Congjie’s concept of 緑色公民, or “green citizens”, and balancing the human impact of industrial and economic development.

This early section is the first to introduce vivid stories of human impact, both on the victims of environmental mismanagement as well as those who strove to address it. These include the story of Huo Daishan, a photographer whose career included the documentation of esophageal cancer in the local people in 20 “cancer villages” on the Huai River, and endured abuse such as a beating by anonymous goons in 2000 just after delivering a scathing report on an offending company.

From this launching pad, the book explores the fight over the planned Nu River hydroelectric dam project, told from the point of view of activist Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers. It then charts the rise of state environmental policy and the growing strength of the State Environmental Protection Agency (later the Ministry of Ecology and Environment) as its then vice-minister, Pan Yue, pushed through major policy changes in the mid-2000s following the environmental disaster of a chemical incident on the Songhua River. 

This is followed by an account of the author’s trip to Guangzhou, written in a more journalistic style, where Ma meets activist Luo Jianming to understand more about the waste management controversies in the mid- to late-2000s. This section is also a fascinating portrait of how the online and offline worlds began to interact during this period, creating a shift in official strategy to formal engagement. 

The book kicks into high gear with a detailed description of the rush to clean up the air for the 2008 Olympic Games, the 2010 “crazy bad” air quality with its off-the-scale atmospheric concentrations of PM2.5, a toxic air pollutant, and the 2013 “Airpocalypse”, when even basketball star Yao Ming commented on the smog. 

It is during this period that China’s State government seized control of the issue and the narrative, with direct intervention by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Although by this point, “The battle to steer China’s energy path toward low-carbon sources was already won on the political level,” the book is careful to explain that this shift did not mean that the central government exerted absolute power: instead, turf wars, give-and-take negotiations, corruption, and personal influence all played a role in the “systemic restructuring of the entire economy”. Ma’s wry comment that “China appears to have achieved much environmental progress despite all the weaknesses in its system” rings true.

Throughout the book, entities from earlier chapters like Lotus MSG come back to haunt the agents of progress and villains become surprising advocates as the policy stakes continue their relentless rise. The final section, about China’s role in global climate change, the development of emissions trading, and the complex bilateral negotiations by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua, is particularly fascinating for anyone who has read the same story from the American point of view. 

Ma explains in the introduction that his aim is to create “a blend of journalistic non-fiction, a historical account, and a personal reflection on the journey we have collectively undertaken.” He warns against giving too much credit to China’s socio-political roots for modern “eco-Marxism”, emphasizing the “materialistic stance that the human economy is embedded in its biophysical environment.” However, the book often takes a step back to examine the theoretical underpinnings of China’s transformation. This even includes the “两山论”, or “Two Mountains Theory” cited by Xi himself: “Green mountains can bring gold mountains, but you cannot buy back green mountains with gold,” which traces its roots to Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature. It is clear that the evolution of environmental policy in China has been fortified by a robust intellectual foundation.

It is difficult to find anything to criticize in this book. If anything, it would be instructive to read a more personal story of Ma’s own involvement in environmental advocacy. At the same time, the story is not over. China’s official net zero target is currently 2060 (at the time of writing, China has yet to submit a new Nationally Determined Contribution), but a fractious relationship with the current US administration, continued structural problems, and backpedaling in the face of competing interests mean “[t]he much celebrated developmental environmentalism is more of a work in progress than an end state.” It is clear, after reading this book, that China’s “work in progress” is vital to that of the rest of the planet, and our collective future.

In Search of Green China
Ma Tianjie
2025, Polity Books, 272pp

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