1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,100 The following is part of Cornell Contemporary China Initiative 2 00:00:03,100 --> 00:00:06,480 Lecture Series under the Cornell East Asia Program. 3 00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,920 The arguments and viewpoints of this talk belong solely to the speaker. 4 00:00:09,920 --> 00:00:11,360 We hope you enjoy. 5 00:00:11,360 --> 00:00:15,680 Hello everybody. We're delighted to welcome you to the third lecture 6 00:00:15,680 --> 00:00:20,760 of the spring 2020 Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture Series 7 00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:31,820 on China's environmental transformations. We have the honor to have with us 8 00:00:31,820 --> 00:00:37,340 Anna Ahlers, Dr. Anna Ahlers, from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. 9 00:00:37,340 --> 00:00:43,320 She will be talking about China's air pollution policy and state-society relations. 10 00:00:43,320 --> 00:00:46,340 You can see the title behind me. Might as well say it. 11 00:00:46,340 --> 00:00:50,360 "Governing the Airpocalypse - Insights from China's War on Smog." 12 00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:57,740 We want to thank our cosponsors who include the Department of Global Development 13 00:00:57,740 --> 00:01:04,100 at the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Polson Institute 14 00:01:04,100 --> 00:01:08,480 for Global Development, and the Environment and Sustainability major 15 00:01:08,480 --> 00:01:13,560 at Cornell. Dr. Ahlers will be talking for 45 minutes to an hour 16 00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:17,380 and then we'll have a chance for questions and answers and I look forward 17 00:01:17,380 --> 00:01:22,400 to an exciting talk and an exciting conversation afterwards. 18 00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:24,520 So thanks to Dr. Ahlers. 19 00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:32,280 Hello everyone. Thank you Jack for the introduction and thank you all for coming. 20 00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:38,200 In times of COVID-19 and of course fantastic weather outside I appreciate that. 21 00:01:38,200 --> 00:01:47,460 Jack just read my title roughly a decade after it first occurred. 22 00:01:47,460 --> 00:01:51,280 The narrative of China's so-called apocalypse now seems to have a 23 00:01:51,280 --> 00:01:56,140 much less dystopian ring to it than when it first emerged. The new and more 24 00:01:56,140 --> 00:02:01,500 positive main storyline now arguably seems to be that the existential experience 25 00:02:01,500 --> 00:02:06,560 of heavy smoke episodes of especially the early 2010s stimulated broad 26 00:02:06,560 --> 00:02:10,780 awareness of the risks of air pollution in Chinese society and eventually 27 00:02:10,780 --> 00:02:15,020 brought about major changes in related policy and politics in China. 28 00:02:15,020 --> 00:02:20,040 In fact in recent years we see seasonal ups and downs in the concentration and 29 00:02:20,050 --> 00:02:24,700 composition of air pollution in China but the overall verdict seems to be that 30 00:02:24,700 --> 00:02:28,720 the Chinese government was largely successful in reducing average air 31 00:02:28,720 --> 00:02:32,830 pollution in urban centers. We don't even need to look at all the scientific data 32 00:02:32,830 --> 00:02:36,730 and chemical component analyses to observe for instance that the previously 33 00:02:36,730 --> 00:02:41,190 all too common heavy smog episodes in cities such as Beijing have decreased. 34 00:02:41,190 --> 00:02:46,060 Not least for instance air pollution seems to not even be such a dramatic issue 35 00:02:46,060 --> 00:02:50,890 anymore for expat employees pondering on the quality of life for their families 36 00:02:50,890 --> 00:02:57,320 in their new home, China. But I will leave these evaluations to the actual experts. 37 00:02:57,320 --> 00:03:01,930 I feel more comfortable talking about the great smog of China from a political 38 00:03:01,930 --> 00:03:05,980 science or a political sociology perspective and that is what I'm trained 39 00:03:05,980 --> 00:03:11,650 to do at least. Altogether it seems that the deep societal concern with a risk 40 00:03:11,650 --> 00:03:15,190 accompanying heavy air pollution has also stimulated reforms of China's 41 00:03:15,190 --> 00:03:20,410 overall environmental policy and governance. Moreover for some observers 42 00:03:20,410 --> 00:03:24,220 this turn towards putting environmental pollution issues higher on the political 43 00:03:24,220 --> 00:03:29,170 agenda and to try to tackle them fast and effectively can be described as a 44 00:03:29,170 --> 00:03:33,940 type of authoritarian environmentalism. This implies that an authoritarian 45 00:03:33,940 --> 00:03:39,200 government can revert to much harsher measures such as ad hoc decision making, 46 00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:43,420 the top-down enforcement of technocratic solutions, and the restrictions 47 00:03:43,420 --> 00:03:47,100 of individual consumption and mobility, among other things, 48 00:03:47,100 --> 00:03:51,540 in order to reduce pollution. This is a narrative I think we see 49 00:03:51,550 --> 00:03:57,370 nowadays when we look at reactions to the COVID-19 crisis. It is another 50 00:03:57,370 --> 00:04:00,610 question whether these measures are effective and whether the 51 00:04:00,610 --> 00:04:04,660 stated ambitious goals for air pollution reduction were and can be attained 52 00:04:04,660 --> 00:04:06,340 and at what costs. 53 00:04:06,340 --> 00:04:10,620 In this talk I will first of all very briefly run you through the overall 54 00:04:10,620 --> 00:04:15,380 apocalypse story and its effects again. Although I don't think it's necessary 55 00:04:15,380 --> 00:04:19,480 to highlight all the details again as this topic has been covered quite 56 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:24,480 broadly over the last decade including in Western language popular media. 57 00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:29,380 I would like to point out why in my view the apocalypse was indeed 58 00:04:29,380 --> 00:04:33,520 a game changer for Chinese air pollution and environmental politics. 59 00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:37,400 I would like to remind everyone of how for the first time in China's 60 00:04:37,400 --> 00:04:42,200 environmental history, political, scientific, and media or public discourse 61 00:04:42,200 --> 00:04:46,580 did interface in new and in sufficiently powerful ways which eventually 62 00:04:46,580 --> 00:04:51,800 brought about these changes. I will then however leave this macro view 63 00:04:51,800 --> 00:04:55,960 and focus our attention on some more concrete aspects of this story. 64 00:04:55,960 --> 00:05:00,100 Not only do I think that local or microscopic stories are always necessary 65 00:05:00,100 --> 00:05:04,460 to add nuance, they reveal that reality is often much more complex than what 66 00:05:04,460 --> 00:05:09,470 macro data and statistics can tell us. But also it is usually on the ground 67 00:05:09,470 --> 00:05:14,140 where the action is I would say. This has always been my approach, 68 00:05:14,140 --> 00:05:17,540 my very qualitative approach to studying Chinese politics. 69 00:05:17,540 --> 00:05:21,290 I will pick two aspects that I discovered over the course of my 70 00:05:21,290 --> 00:05:25,140 empirical studies of Chinese air pollution policies during the last 71 00:05:25,140 --> 00:05:29,780 6 years or so and that I find most intriguing from a governance perspective 72 00:05:29,780 --> 00:05:34,660 and which again make the apocalypse story special. Governmental strategies of 73 00:05:34,669 --> 00:05:39,860 policy bundling that I will argue are most prominent and possible and entice 74 00:05:39,860 --> 00:05:44,620 mock politics in China today. And newly emerging science policy interfaces 75 00:05:44,620 --> 00:05:49,240 end up transformed or transforming role of science and scientists and Chinese 76 00:05:49,250 --> 00:05:54,440 environmental governance which not least offer reasons for some hope although 77 00:05:54,440 --> 00:05:59,800 scientific expertise in Chinese politics is of course still heavily constrained. 78 00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:03,640 But let me first give you a bit of the background for my studies. 79 00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:10,000 I'm not going to talk very heavily about methodology but just to show you where 80 00:06:10,010 --> 00:06:16,600 my insights that I would argue I have gained over the last six years come from. 81 00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:22,190 When I moved to Oslo in 2014 and I became part of a larger project 82 00:06:22,190 --> 00:06:26,620 framework which was called "Airborne," "The Airborne Project: Pollution, 83 00:06:26,620 --> 00:06:34,300 Climate Change and Visions of Sustainability in China." I led a team 84 00:06:34,300 --> 00:06:39,460 that consisted of political scientists and sociologists but we worked very 85 00:06:39,470 --> 00:06:44,150 closely with all these other disciplines that you see listed on the left together 86 00:06:44,150 --> 00:06:49,220 in this project. There was a challenge sometimes but there were also a lot of 87 00:06:49,220 --> 00:06:52,800 benefits from working together. People came from different places. 88 00:06:52,800 --> 00:06:57,880 The core group was based in Oslo but we collaborated with mainly 89 00:06:57,880 --> 00:07:04,480 Zhejiang University in China as well. So I said I'm going to talk you through 90 00:07:04,480 --> 00:07:09,700 the main apocalypse storyline again just to remind us all of what actually happened. 91 00:07:09,710 --> 00:07:15,620 In China since roughly 2008 you might remember the big concern for air 92 00:07:15,620 --> 00:07:20,420 pollution around the Summer Olympics. Many countries were worried 93 00:07:20,420 --> 00:07:25,460 that their athletes might be affected by the health risks around air pollution. 94 00:07:25,460 --> 00:07:31,280 And so the US Embassy started to tweet real-time air pollution data from their 95 00:07:31,280 --> 00:07:35,420 bases in Beijing. That was also accessible for many people in China 96 00:07:35,420 --> 00:07:40,360 and it triggered this whole debate about the actual risk, the actual concentration 97 00:07:40,360 --> 00:07:47,280 of air pollution in China. From then on, so from 2008, there was this talk about 98 00:07:47,280 --> 00:07:52,540 do we actually get real data about air pollution in China. And the government, 99 00:07:52,540 --> 00:07:57,770 although it treated actual air pollution data as a taboo or as a sensitive topic 100 00:07:57,770 --> 00:08:02,320 sometimes, it started to set up measuring stations across the country. 101 00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:06,830 For different reasons of course it was also becoming more and more important 102 00:08:06,830 --> 00:08:10,370 for the government itself to have a better picture of the actual crisis 103 00:08:10,370 --> 00:08:15,170 around air pollution in China. But I would say it was only with the 104 00:08:15,170 --> 00:08:20,180 winters of 2012 and '13, that was also when Western media came up with this 105 00:08:20,180 --> 00:08:28,520 drastic term apocalypse or Armageddon, that we see the actual effects of massive 106 00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:34,620 smog episodes on Chinese society. We had massive episodes again in 2015 107 00:08:34,620 --> 00:08:42,780 and 2016 and '17 but it's very clear that you can trace from 2012 and '13 onwards 108 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:48,900 what effects the smoke perception or the smoke exposure has. For example, 109 00:08:48,900 --> 00:08:55,120 the actual term for smog, 雾霾 [wumai], was only coined or actually broadly used 110 00:08:55,120 --> 00:09:00,980 from this time onwards. We did some media searches where you can see 111 00:09:00,980 --> 00:09:06,460 for example that in 2012 the term 雾霾 appeared only, again this is 112 00:09:06,460 --> 00:09:10,380 anecdotal evidence from our superficial search but it tells you something, 113 00:09:10,380 --> 00:09:16,800 so only 45 times in newspapers and scientific articles. And then the number 114 00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:21,780 jumped to 766 in just a year when this term became more common. 115 00:09:21,780 --> 00:09:27,840 Also from then on you had more and more articles, scientific but also popular 116 00:09:27,840 --> 00:09:32,760 science articles, and blogs and everything pointing out the effects 117 00:09:32,760 --> 00:09:38,000 of air pollution with regard to health and the overall national economy, 118 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:44,200 and also triggering a lot of public debate about can we actually trust the government 119 00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:50,680 in doing something about it. You see beyond that air pollution becoming 120 00:09:50,680 --> 00:09:56,450 much more prominent in people's everyday life. This was an exhibition 121 00:09:56,450 --> 00:10:01,920 about other countries' ways of dealing with air pollution that I saw in Wudaokou, 122 00:10:01,920 --> 00:10:06,680 the Wudaokou shopping street in Beijing. You had like 20 of these posters talking 123 00:10:06,680 --> 00:10:12,640 about other cities worldwide problems, Paris L.A., with air pollution and 124 00:10:12,640 --> 00:10:17,760 where this pollution comes from and what these countries did about it. 125 00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:21,820 So the focus was on foreign countries but at least there was an exhibition about 126 00:10:21,820 --> 00:10:29,480 smoke at Wudaokou. Then you have all these, say, technologies emerging. 127 00:10:29,480 --> 00:10:34,880 The AQI air quality index apps which people now check as much as they 128 00:10:34,880 --> 00:10:38,720 check the weather reports or at least for a certain period of time. 129 00:10:38,720 --> 00:10:45,700 For Beijing residents and other larger cities these measures of air quality 130 00:10:45,700 --> 00:10:49,480 have become as important when you think about what should I wear, 131 00:10:49,480 --> 00:10:52,800 should I send my children out, can they exercise outside. 132 00:10:52,800 --> 00:10:58,560 We have face mask fashion coming up. This is an extreme example maybe 133 00:10:58,560 --> 00:11:07,280 but you could see face masks again reemerging as a daily life tool. 134 00:11:07,280 --> 00:11:12,440 And of course we have surveys showing, and this was in 2015, that air pollution 135 00:11:12,440 --> 00:11:17,380 became a problem that was ranking just below corruption in China. 136 00:11:17,380 --> 00:11:24,380 So a lot of public concern with air pollution. Air pollution was taken up in education. 137 00:11:24,380 --> 00:11:28,700 There is, and a colleague of mine has studied this very intensively, 138 00:11:28,700 --> 00:11:34,680 the historical concern about fresh air. Not only 气 or anything but ventilation 139 00:11:34,680 --> 00:11:41,140 is very important. He wrote many articles actually about ventilation 140 00:11:41,140 --> 00:11:45,580 as a national concern in China. So there is a history to this. 141 00:11:45,580 --> 00:11:50,500 But now you have air pollution as a content in environmental education 142 00:11:50,500 --> 00:11:55,740 in schools. And I think, I would say, that China is probably the only country 143 00:11:55,740 --> 00:11:59,500 where you could stop a child on the street and ask what is PM 2.5, 144 00:11:59,500 --> 00:12:04,720 the particulate matter, and you would get an explanation. I think the chances 145 00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:07,620 are pretty high and I don't think that you can do it anywhere else. 146 00:12:09,920 --> 00:12:18,180 This is another example of how broad the popular concern was with air pollution. 147 00:12:18,180 --> 00:12:22,360 You've probably all heard about this story about "Under the Dome," a documentary 148 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:29,860 by a very well known Chinese TV anchor who in this documentary talked about 149 00:12:29,860 --> 00:12:35,220 the dimension of the air pollution problem, especially particulate matter pollution 150 00:12:35,220 --> 00:12:40,840 and where it comes from, also pointing at collusion between political authorities 151 00:12:40,840 --> 00:12:45,600 and the business sector as a reason for not doing anything about it, 152 00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:51,140 not doing enough about air pollution. Surprisingly it was only censored 153 00:12:51,140 --> 00:12:56,960 after a week so there were hundreds of millions of clicks. People were able to access 154 00:12:56,960 --> 00:13:04,020 the video from someplace or another. This has triggered some suspicion 155 00:13:04,020 --> 00:13:07,720 about whether Xi or the people behind the film had some help 156 00:13:07,720 --> 00:13:13,300 from the Ministry of Environment who were actually for having this public education out. 157 00:13:13,300 --> 00:13:17,700 So a lot of studies have actually looked into that but it's a very 158 00:13:17,700 --> 00:13:23,820 prominent example of public debate about air pollution. 159 00:13:23,820 --> 00:13:29,120 I mentioned some of the apps where you check air quality as you 160 00:13:29,120 --> 00:13:35,340 do check the weather report. There are also apps that emerged 161 00:13:35,340 --> 00:13:43,360 where you trace or you map pollution. There's one. It was actually also in Chinese 162 00:13:43,370 --> 00:13:47,450 called "Pollution Map" and then later they had to change the name again 163 00:13:47,450 --> 00:13:52,580 to make it sound a bit more positive I think by one of China's most famous 164 00:13:52,580 --> 00:13:58,040 environmental activists. And here you don't only get information about where 165 00:13:58,040 --> 00:14:03,600 a polluting source is located, a factory for example. You could also report pollution. 166 00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:10,220 We tried very hard to trace how this works. So there are different apps around. 167 00:14:10,220 --> 00:14:13,640 This is the biggest but there are also some local apps with report functions. 168 00:14:13,640 --> 00:14:17,260 So what does actually happen? Once you report something 169 00:14:17,270 --> 00:14:21,860 you could take a picture and then upload it to the app and then it said it goes 170 00:14:21,860 --> 00:14:26,820 straight to the local Environmental Protection Bureau. It's very hard to trace 171 00:14:26,820 --> 00:14:32,040 what actually happens to this information. In Hangzhou there was an NGO that was 172 00:14:32,040 --> 00:14:38,620 in between sitting as an intermediary before these reports went on to the local 173 00:14:38,620 --> 00:14:41,740 Environmental Protection Bureau. But it was all a bit sensitive 174 00:14:41,740 --> 00:14:47,400 and as you can imagine hard for us as foreign researchers to get access. 175 00:14:47,400 --> 00:14:55,100 Even our Chinese colleagues had to deal with a lot of sensitivity. So I would say, 176 00:14:55,100 --> 00:14:59,660 it's an interesting feature, I don't think that we should put too much 177 00:14:59,660 --> 00:15:06,800 emphasis on it because it still depends a lot on what happens 178 00:15:06,800 --> 00:15:11,450 to this data. But you give people the impression at least that they are 179 00:15:11,450 --> 00:15:16,880 empowered to report pollution and especially air pollution. The government 180 00:15:16,880 --> 00:15:22,060 also changed its ways of framing and dealing and talking about air pollution. 181 00:15:22,060 --> 00:15:27,020 It was in the title. They actually said they now have to fight a war against air 182 00:15:27,020 --> 00:15:32,720 pollution as it says in Li Keqiang's statement in around 2014. 183 00:15:32,720 --> 00:15:37,400 And when China Daily, that's a cartoon from China Daily try to illustrate what 184 00:15:37,400 --> 00:15:43,620 it actually means. They came up with this, I don't know, China representative 185 00:15:43,620 --> 00:15:49,700 fighting against a pollutant or something. This i found interesting because 186 00:15:49,700 --> 00:15:54,880 the main strengths or the power comes from as it said technology and law 187 00:15:54,880 --> 00:16:01,420 in the war against air pollution. And we see also that around that time 188 00:16:01,420 --> 00:16:08,680 China's environmental protection law was revised and the air pollution prevention 189 00:16:08,680 --> 00:16:14,520 and control law was also amended. It existed as you can see since the 1980s 190 00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:19,660 as most of the environmental law so it's not a new thing. China had very actually 191 00:16:19,660 --> 00:16:23,300 quite sophisticated comprehensive environmental laws all the time, 192 00:16:23,300 --> 00:16:34,900 stemming from the end of the 1980s. So it's not correct to say that 193 00:16:34,900 --> 00:16:40,820 this all triggered environmental legislation. But of course laws 194 00:16:40,820 --> 00:16:46,020 had to be amended and extended and revised because as we know 195 00:16:46,020 --> 00:16:51,700 law enforcement in China is pretty weak. I'm going to talk about that again 196 00:16:51,700 --> 00:16:58,080 in a second. And what we also see around the same time, 2013, is that 197 00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:03,280 an action plan for air pollution prevention and control was launched and that is 198 00:17:03,290 --> 00:17:07,370 actually from a Chinese governance perspective. I think more important 199 00:17:07,370 --> 00:17:13,189 because it's these plans that actually communicate to all officials, everyone 200 00:17:13,189 --> 00:17:16,459 involved that this is something you need to do. It's like a joint plan by the 201 00:17:16,460 --> 00:17:20,560 political leadership saying that this is our top goal and you have to do something. 202 00:17:20,560 --> 00:17:27,780 A law is like some kind of nice to have administrative thing. I'm exaggerating 203 00:17:27,780 --> 00:17:32,120 but if you have an action plan, a political action plan, this is what you have to do. 204 00:17:32,120 --> 00:17:37,000 Policymakers in China would know and the plan lists also 205 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:42,880 very ambitious goals regarding the reduction of PM 10 and PM 2.5 206 00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:49,160 so particulate matter pollution. It pointed out target regions across China 207 00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:54,600 and pointed to specific sectors and industries, cement production for 208 00:17:54,600 --> 00:18:00,720 example or coal use, to do something about air pollution emission. 209 00:18:00,720 --> 00:18:07,520 And importantly here in the bottom it also left some space for local 210 00:18:07,520 --> 00:18:16,270 adjustment of these plans. So you have very crucial, hard, ambitious, big goals. 211 00:18:16,270 --> 00:18:20,600 Some of the measures, some of the tools that you could use for achieving these 212 00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:24,620 goals are stated in the plan but you also leave a lot of room for local 213 00:18:24,620 --> 00:18:30,040 adjustment. So the message is okay we have to achieve this, whatever you do 214 00:18:30,040 --> 00:18:33,840 you can choose your own tools sometimes but we have to achieve these goals. 215 00:18:33,840 --> 00:18:39,680 And main goals were reduction of PM 2.5 concentration. 216 00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:43,840 So that's the document side. We also see, and that's also important 217 00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:49,660 in Chinese politics of course, that it's accompanied by ideology 218 00:18:49,660 --> 00:18:55,240 or slogans. And one of the main backup slogan for environmental politics 219 00:18:55,240 --> 00:18:59,900 is ecological civilization. I think those of you who are professors in this class 220 00:18:59,900 --> 00:19:05,960 have heard about that I guess before. It's not a new thing. It's actually 221 00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:10,980 an older slogan that was around for quite some time. But then it was elevated 222 00:19:10,980 --> 00:19:17,220 to a central slogan in 2015 and gave an ideological framing 223 00:19:17,220 --> 00:19:22,220 for the new environmental policies. It bets heavily on technology 224 00:19:22,220 --> 00:19:27,100 and individual responsibility to achieve this goal of having or building 225 00:19:27,100 --> 00:19:34,340 a beautiful China by 2035. The law was amended 226 00:19:34,340 --> 00:19:41,620 and expanded. And importantly it now included among the tools 227 00:19:41,620 --> 00:19:50,060 much more emphasis on local officials' performance indicators in a wa y. 228 00:19:50,060 --> 00:19:58,460 The law itself made it possible to put a lot more pressure on local officials 229 00:19:58,460 --> 00:20:02,000 to treat environmental target as something very crucial. 230 00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:07,840 It was made a cadre's lifelong responsibility if an environmental haze 231 00:20:07,850 --> 00:20:12,110 or something happens in his or her locality that our study's showing 232 00:20:12,110 --> 00:20:19,340 that it's not implemented and not used that comprehensively this tool. 233 00:20:19,340 --> 00:20:25,480 So there are officials who were not drastically punished for environmental 234 00:20:25,490 --> 00:20:29,720 problems in their localities but other studies show tracing for example leading 235 00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:35,920 cadres' careers that it is employed. So it's a mixed picture. At least on paper 236 00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:41,280 it now exists and that was a big change because it did not exist before, 237 00:20:41,280 --> 00:20:46,660 environmental targets as something very crucial in officials' performance record. 238 00:20:46,660 --> 00:20:52,220 And there were also attempts to make data faking or whitewashing 239 00:20:52,220 --> 00:21:00,400 less possible across China. So I mentioned in the beginning there 240 00:21:00,410 --> 00:21:06,860 are first successes of these changes and transformations. You see these are older 241 00:21:06,860 --> 00:21:11,840 data but at least it shows that from very early on these measures 242 00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:20,280 did produce some tangible outcomes. A lot of cities improved their standing 243 00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:22,900 and national rankings and national performance rankings 244 00:21:22,900 --> 00:21:28,480 with regard to air pollution. Average particulate matter pollution in Beijing 245 00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:33,100 for example decreased by 40% in the first years. And even Greenpeace, 246 00:21:33,100 --> 00:21:38,100 who is of course usually a big critic of the Chinese government and its 247 00:21:38,100 --> 00:21:43,620 environmental record, they wrote in a report already in 2015 that China's air 248 00:21:43,620 --> 00:21:47,480 pollution problem is slowly but surely receding. New data shows more than 249 00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:51,980 3 years on from its infamous apocalypse China's pollution levels are dropping 250 00:21:51,980 --> 00:21:56,860 at an average rate of 12% a year following emergency government action. 251 00:21:58,180 --> 00:22:04,040 So it seems now that the storyline around the apocalypse 252 00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:09,780 is a bit more positive in a way. Also you can see from some of the aspects 253 00:22:09,780 --> 00:22:14,120 that I've just superficially mentioned that there seems to be a realignment 254 00:22:14,120 --> 00:22:19,560 between political authorities, science or the knowledge about air pollution 255 00:22:19,560 --> 00:22:23,800 and its health risks and other things dimensions of pollution, and the public 256 00:22:23,810 --> 00:22:28,910 concern. And this I think is something that brought about changes because that 257 00:22:28,910 --> 00:22:33,000 didn't exist before. You always had concern also about air pollution 258 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:38,140 and different fields but not in such a concentrated and aligned manner. 259 00:22:38,140 --> 00:22:45,260 And you see also that in the following years after '13 '14 other pollution areas 260 00:22:45,260 --> 00:22:51,800 or pollution problems were lifted to the status of being treated in action plans, 261 00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:55,420 water pollution, soil pollution, and eventually also climate change 262 00:22:55,420 --> 00:22:59,180 or global warming, as something that had to be tackled. 263 00:22:59,180 --> 00:23:04,900 The action plan was renewed in 2018 and the government included 264 00:23:04,900 --> 00:23:10,460 some new tools that were missing from the older plan, 265 00:23:10,460 --> 00:23:14,120 for example more coordination between different localities 266 00:23:14,120 --> 00:23:18,660 or between different departments which, as I will point out in a minute, 267 00:23:18,660 --> 00:23:25,340 has some reasons for why it was added. And, as I already mentioned, climate 268 00:23:25,340 --> 00:23:30,240 governance became much more prominent and it is also reflected much more 269 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:34,440 in this transformed Ministry of Ecology and Environment that was found in, 270 00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:46,560 or reemerged in 2018. For me I don't evaluate the pollution data as 271 00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:51,560 an expert, as a natural scientist. But for me it was through all these years 272 00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:56,440 very interesting to look at what actually happened there from a government. 273 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:04,020 or governance perspective. So the fact that we've suddenly had an action plan, 274 00:24:04,020 --> 00:24:08,620 I think it's due to the fact that law usually doesn't really work as a 275 00:24:08,630 --> 00:24:12,590 good tool in environmental policymaking or in policymaking in general in China. 276 00:24:12,590 --> 00:24:19,200 So there had to be something that was accompanying or amending, 277 00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:25,020 complementing, the weak judicial system. China of course also has to deal with 278 00:24:25,020 --> 00:24:33,100 a lot of local differences in industrial development but also in 279 00:24:33,100 --> 00:24:39,920 many many other terms. The action plan is designed in the way that it can be 280 00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:44,380 locally adjusted to local circumstances. And in order to do so also 281 00:24:44,380 --> 00:24:50,480 what's also interesting is that although I see that Chinese environmental policy 282 00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:54,380 or Chinese anti-air pollution policy has transformed tremendously, 283 00:24:54,380 --> 00:24:58,360 it still doesn't really look like environmental policy would look like 284 00:24:58,360 --> 00:25:02,990 in other countries. I think you still see some, I hate to say policies 285 00:25:02,990 --> 00:25:07,580 with Chinese characteristics, but something that is a bit more 286 00:25:07,580 --> 00:25:14,560 interesting and local in this regard. For example references to traditional means, 287 00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:20,840 more informal instruments, propaganda that is targeting the cadres actually, 288 00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:26,300 those who have to implement the policies, and sometimes also campaigns 289 00:25:26,300 --> 00:25:32,320 like really concentrated, targeted actions against environmental pollution. 290 00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:38,200 So I'm now leaving this macro story and trying to give you some more 291 00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:45,720 examples from the field. There could be many more but I've chosen two areas 292 00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:50,120 where many many interesting aspects for me especially from a 293 00:25:50,120 --> 00:25:56,400 governance perspective become relevant. And one is what I would call 294 00:25:56,400 --> 00:26:02,960 policy bundling, could maybe be called differently. There's one colleague of mine, 295 00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:08,640 [unintelligible], she has used the word in CO2 emission policies in China. 296 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:13,730 I'm not sure whether Professor Zinda would agree, I think you wrote 297 00:26:13,730 --> 00:26:18,980 about dual function policies once? We can discuss whether 298 00:26:18,980 --> 00:26:22,700 that is what I mean. Maybe it's another word for what I mean. 299 00:26:22,700 --> 00:26:29,240 So what I mean is that in this context of new targets with new rules 300 00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:38,240 and somehow open toolbox and a lot of pressure, there emerged a new 301 00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:42,540 necessity for local governance to come up with solutions and they 302 00:26:42,540 --> 00:26:48,280 often chose to bundle policies. You could also say they use evolution as 303 00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:54,500 a framing for particular measures that sounds maybe a bit more negative. 304 00:26:54,500 --> 00:26:57,920 And I think one of my examples actually shows that it's sometimes 305 00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:04,120 a little, it can have a little suspicious ring to it. 306 00:27:04,120 --> 00:27:09,100 So the official definition of policy bundling would be, there are different definitions 307 00:27:09,110 --> 00:27:13,060 in the literature, it could mean that you merge quite different policy measures 308 00:27:13,060 --> 00:27:19,120 that are pursued simultaneously for one goal. It could mean that you reframe 309 00:27:19,120 --> 00:27:23,840 something that was previously unsuccessful under one name and then 310 00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:29,880 give it another name for an older cause or even a new cause. But it could, 311 00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:34,720 that's what I just meant, also mean an undisclosed inclusion of certain 312 00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:40,780 measures in a policy framework. That's still the theory. I think when I now talk 313 00:27:40,780 --> 00:27:44,400 about these examples you will get more of an impression what I mean. 314 00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,380 One measure that I guess you have heard about before is car driving restrictions. 315 00:27:50,380 --> 00:27:57,940 I think we mostly hear about the odd and even system, which means that 316 00:27:57,940 --> 00:28:06,240 based on the last digit of your license plate your driving would be restricted. 317 00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:10,080 For example if you have an odd number you can only drive on odd days 318 00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:15,020 and even and so. Beijing did it very early in 2008 for the Olympics. 319 00:28:15,020 --> 00:28:20,360 I think that was when it was first also reported in our media, this strange thing 320 00:28:20,360 --> 00:28:26,200 that prevent people from driving their car on certain days. But it can also mean 321 00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:34,120 限牌限行, that you limit the amount of cars that are allowed to drive on city streets 322 00:28:34,120 --> 00:28:38,640 at all. So you buy a car but then you don't get a license plate. 323 00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:42,480 City governments reduce the number of license plates that are issued 324 00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:46,340 in order to reduce the overall number of cars that are allowed to drive. 325 00:28:46,340 --> 00:28:50,760 And there are places where a lottery is in use or an auction is in use 326 00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:57,740 and some places use both restricting measures. Still here you can see 327 00:28:57,740 --> 00:29:07,320 the timeline. Shanghai was using the odd and even system already in the '80s. 328 00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:13,100 But it was only with the Beijing Olympics 2008 that it was more widely used. 329 00:29:13,100 --> 00:29:20,500 But still it's just a handful or maybe two handful of cities in the whole of China 330 00:29:20,500 --> 00:29:30,120 who actually make use of this measure. Some do both. Fewer do the overall 331 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:32,840 license plate ban. 332 00:29:36,060 --> 00:29:39,360 So what is special about it? First of all it in recent years 333 00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:44,380 it has always been labeled as a pollution reduction measure. 334 00:29:44,380 --> 00:29:49,840 Not when it started in '86, and I'm coming back to that. But the overall framing 335 00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:58,920 mostly is air pollution. Some years previously it was still traffic, like traffic 336 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,960 management, congestion reduction. And now suddenly it got the framing of 337 00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:08,300 okay everyone has to reduce driving their cars in order to keep the city's 338 00:30:08,310 --> 00:30:14,810 air healthy. And there's only a few Chinese cities to actually do this 339 00:30:14,810 --> 00:30:18,840 because it's also a very risky policy. You can imagine that the government was 340 00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,920 very aware of the fact that people might be very unhappy about that. It causes a lot 341 00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:28,620 of trouble and discomfort for people and not being able to drive. 342 00:30:28,620 --> 00:30:33,720 There was limited legitimacy because at no point did Beijing or the central 343 00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:37,080 government say this is a measure you should use. It's something that 344 00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:44,280 developed locally. At some point in the early 2010's with new legislation there 345 00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:48,440 was this encouragement of using all sorts of local measures which backed up 346 00:30:48,450 --> 00:30:55,110 some city's enactment of these measures. But there was at no time did 347 00:30:55,110 --> 00:31:00,560 Beijing say okay this is what you should do. It was really a local choice. 348 00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:09,500 It was highly centralized, very top-down, ad hoc, also very secretively, especially in 349 00:31:09,500 --> 00:31:13,490 Hangzhou after a while because Hangzhou was following after a few other places 350 00:31:13,490 --> 00:31:18,620 had chosen this measure. So you would tell people just a few hours in advance 351 00:31:18,620 --> 00:31:24,100 that from tomorrow we'll limit the amount of license plates that we give out. 352 00:31:24,100 --> 00:31:30,820 And so you can imagine the drama that caused in the population. 353 00:31:30,820 --> 00:31:35,260 There was, different from many other policies now in China, very little 354 00:31:35,270 --> 00:31:41,899 input from the public in advance. So there was no hearing, no drafting period, 355 00:31:41,899 --> 00:31:45,799 where what is usually now common for many of the laws where people can 356 00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:49,200 comment on things and experts are invited for hearings and have to give 357 00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:53,740 their suggestions. That all didn't happen because it was treated like a super 358 00:31:53,750 --> 00:32:00,230 confidential highly sensitive policy in these cities because the government 359 00:32:00,230 --> 00:32:04,500 knew what was going to happen. It only happened afterwards when they 360 00:32:04,500 --> 00:32:10,440 tried to improve the policies that they invited public feedback. The costs were, 361 00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:15,620 or are, pretty high. If you want to play the lottery of the bidding you have to 362 00:32:15,620 --> 00:32:20,620 invest a lot of money, sometimes as much money as you would need for buying a car. 363 00:32:20,620 --> 00:32:25,039 There's different numbers. This is one from Hangzhou where it says you only 364 00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:28,940 have a 2% chance of actually succeeding in the lottery for a license plate. 365 00:32:28,940 --> 00:32:35,560 So this shows that it was actually a drama but of course there 366 00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:39,800 were some loopholes and people with connections could still get license plates. 367 00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:46,480 And this all caused a lot of discontent. And it also became apparent to us, 368 00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:51,280 when we looked into a few of these cases and traced the evolution of this policy, 369 00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,760 that you could actually always trace it back to one leading figure 370 00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:59,740 who transferred from another post in another city and had implemented it there. 371 00:32:59,740 --> 00:33:03,060 For example Hangzhou's party secretary came from Tianjin where he had 372 00:33:03,060 --> 00:33:06,980 done that before and so he imported this measure to Hangzhou. 373 00:33:06,980 --> 00:33:11,780 So this whole story about policy diffusion and policy learning is little distorted 374 00:33:11,780 --> 00:33:18,600 in this case. You can actually see that it has a lot of personal side to it. 375 00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:24,380 And it could only happen, that's also on the slide here, that if 376 00:33:24,380 --> 00:33:29,160 this party secretary was very powerful, he had connections high up to Beijing, 377 00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,880 and only that made it possible that you could actually come 378 00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:39,080 with this very new measure suddenly. So what happened here. 379 00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:43,380 What we see and what we learned in our interviews, and we also interviewed 380 00:33:43,380 --> 00:33:47,380 some of the traffic studies people who were involved in improving 381 00:33:47,380 --> 00:33:52,480 the policy afterwards, that this air pollution framing was actually really 382 00:33:52,490 --> 00:33:58,639 strategically used to make the policy more acceptable. And many in the 383 00:33:58,639 --> 00:34:03,649 government didn't actually try to hide that fact. They said yeah at some point 384 00:34:03,649 --> 00:34:07,500 we just had to find a way to clear the street, I mean still don't clear the street, 385 00:34:07,500 --> 00:34:15,140 but to have fewer cars on the city streets we need to construct public transportation. 386 00:34:15,140 --> 00:34:18,140 We cannot do this when there are so many cars on the streets. 387 00:34:18,140 --> 00:34:22,080 We have to avoid traffic jams and everything. And suddenly in our 388 00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:25,520 interviews after a while this air pollution framing, the air pollution reasoning 389 00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:35,540 actually completely disappeared. So we will learn that, I think it is somehow 390 00:34:35,540 --> 00:34:40,400 possible to regard air pollution as an actual policy bundling framing here 391 00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:47,680 which actually just served to legitimize the local traffic management policies. 392 00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:56,980 Experts are very unclear, they're not very clear or they cannot really show us 393 00:34:56,980 --> 00:35:00,480 that it has been a very effective measure when we talk about air pollution. 394 00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:06,100 They always point to the fact it needs much more other effects, like better 395 00:35:06,100 --> 00:35:12,420 fuel use, reduction of heavy traffic, in order to get to these results. 396 00:35:12,420 --> 00:35:18,380 But I think you could have a whole debate among natural scientists and among 397 00:35:18,380 --> 00:35:23,320 traffic management people about the effectiveness of this policy. 398 00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:27,000 What we found surprising was the acceptance among the public. 399 00:35:27,010 --> 00:35:31,720 The people we talked to, residents of Hangzhou, but also some of the surveys 400 00:35:31,720 --> 00:35:35,890 that we had access to show that actually the measure is publicly 401 00:35:35,890 --> 00:35:39,520 accepted to a surprising degree. People complain that yeah some days 402 00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:45,820 I just have to find other means of transportation but overall it seems to be 403 00:35:45,820 --> 00:35:52,480 by now pretty much accepted and overall it has continued for a while 404 00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:59,530 until recently many of these among, it's not so many cities, but among 405 00:35:59,530 --> 00:36:04,400 those few cities some, under the impression of the economic crisis 406 00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:13,440 and following the US-Chinese trade war of recent years, began to soften this 407 00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,720 policy again. And here then suddenly while it was always sold as 408 00:36:16,720 --> 00:36:21,940 a anti-pollution policy, now it's very clear that you softened the policy 409 00:36:21,940 --> 00:36:29,470 because you want to increase demand, economic demand. So a long long and very 410 00:36:29,470 --> 00:36:38,770 complex story short, I come to the second example. A bit different. But the bunting 411 00:36:38,770 --> 00:36:45,070 here is for me. So that's the industrial air pollution source transport policy 412 00:36:45,070 --> 00:36:51,060 where urban governments have to move factories out of the city 413 00:36:51,060 --> 00:36:57,220 especially out of the vicinity of residential areas. But sometimes it 414 00:36:57,220 --> 00:37:01,510 really means like it is shown here in the cartoon that you want to get rid 415 00:37:01,510 --> 00:37:07,050 of any industrial facility around in urban areas. No stacks anymore, nothing. 416 00:37:07,050 --> 00:37:11,650 Therefore you either have to close these facilities down completely or you 417 00:37:11,650 --> 00:37:18,360 have to move them to another place. And we observed some cases in Zhejiang 418 00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:25,900 where we found that local governments were acting, after a while and after quite 419 00:37:25,900 --> 00:37:31,140 a learning process, quite strategically in moving about these transfers. 420 00:37:31,140 --> 00:37:39,040 Of course it needed a special context but the context we found was that 421 00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:43,360 the implementation of this policy moved from being a bilateral thing to a 422 00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:49,000 trilateral strategy. I'm going to tell you what what I mean by that. 423 00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:53,080 But usually if you have problems with industrial air pollution it's 424 00:37:53,080 --> 00:38:00,640 a bilateral process. It's either people living there protesting against this source of 425 00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:06,960 pollution, perceived or real, and you have the local government, mostly the 426 00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:12,400 Environmental Protection Bureaus going against industries trying to make them 427 00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:17,320 upgrade their technologies, at the same time appeasing local populace. 428 00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:21,980 So it's usually the EPB is in the middle. It's usually very weak because it doesn't 429 00:38:21,980 --> 00:38:26,220 have a lot of power to move to do anything vis-a-vis the industries 430 00:38:26,220 --> 00:38:32,840 or in order to appease the public. But in some of the cases we observed 431 00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:38,180 at some point the local EPBs made use of this context in a way. 432 00:38:38,220 --> 00:38:45,100 When protests against the sides got escalated more they suddenly found 433 00:38:45,100 --> 00:38:51,420 a way of utilizing or exploiting this public anger in order to push the local industries 434 00:38:51,420 --> 00:38:57,660 to move away much faster than they would have usually done. All these facilities 435 00:38:57,660 --> 00:39:01,920 in the cases we observed were already scheduled to move or close down 436 00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:09,540 but there was a lot of public discontent and then suddenly the local EPBs thought 437 00:39:09,540 --> 00:39:14,760 that they could even make a name for themselves if they managed to move 438 00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:20,800 these facilities out at a faster pace than usually planned. And what they did was 439 00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,300 they brought together all the stakeholders, on the one hand side 440 00:39:23,300 --> 00:39:30,900 the protesting residents, and the industrial managers, to talk about the process. 441 00:39:30,900 --> 00:39:36,540 And for them they hope to or they expected that this dialogue, as I called it, 442 00:39:36,540 --> 00:39:44,920 would build trust, would help them appease the public on the one side 443 00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:49,660 and also push the industries. And in some of the cases we saw 444 00:39:49,660 --> 00:39:54,000 that was actually pretty successful. There are the cases of course where that 445 00:39:54,010 --> 00:39:57,370 doesn't work but we have some cases where it worked. And suddenly you had 446 00:39:57,370 --> 00:40:03,580 this dialog platform where the EPB managed to bring everyone to the table 447 00:40:03,580 --> 00:40:08,860 and where as a result these factories were actually moving out pretty quickly. 448 00:40:08,860 --> 00:40:13,510 There was a lot of back and forth and people wanted to, representatives of 449 00:40:13,510 --> 00:40:17,620 the residents wanted to know when exactly and they wanted to see the 450 00:40:17,620 --> 00:40:20,860 new site and make sure that the factory doesn't come back and all. 451 00:40:20,860 --> 00:40:26,320 So it's a very complex story. We wrote about it but the basic 452 00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:31,400 procedure was like that. So what happened was that the EPB 453 00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:38,920 was utilizing this public anger and actually was pushing against the industries that 454 00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:42,730 usually you would expect. And there is of course lot of evidence showing that 455 00:40:42,730 --> 00:40:47,100 there's usually a lot of collusion between local industries and the government. 456 00:40:47,100 --> 00:40:50,540 But suddenly under the impression of new environmental policies 457 00:40:50,540 --> 00:40:55,420 and this hard target of moving out all industrial facilities and suddenly got a 458 00:40:55,420 --> 00:41:02,860 very different dynamic. Still I would say, I mean the cases we observed I wouldn't 459 00:41:02,860 --> 00:41:07,060 say that they are overly generalizable. It was Zhejiang 460 00:41:07,060 --> 00:41:13,580 we have to remember. But this was employed as a strategy. And then of course 461 00:41:13,580 --> 00:41:18,600 another problem is that you don't really know, in our cases we 462 00:41:18,610 --> 00:41:22,690 follow that up, but you often don't know when these industries are transferred, 463 00:41:22,690 --> 00:41:28,300 where they are transferred to. Some are transferred to upgraded industrial parks 464 00:41:28,300 --> 00:41:34,200 and that's probably a very positive development. Also the chemists and the 465 00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:38,110 environmental engineers that we work with, they were pretty positive about 466 00:41:38,110 --> 00:41:42,550 that kind of upgrading. Sometimes you of course close those facilities down 467 00:41:42,550 --> 00:41:47,780 completely. Then it's gone. But sometimes they are moved 468 00:41:47,780 --> 00:41:51,880 out of the countryside in a hidden in some villages where then of course the village 469 00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:58,440 community has to deal with pollution. We had a PhD candidate who wanted to 470 00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:05,300 trace some of these transported factories. But as you can imagine that is very 471 00:42:05,300 --> 00:42:10,760 difficult to do especially for in that case a Norwegian running after the factories 472 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:15,380 and trying to check out the new sites so he had to give up that. 473 00:42:15,380 --> 00:42:20,360 There is some quantitative studies which I think don't really, you get 474 00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:25,680 an overview but they don't really get to the actual question whether it's just a 475 00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:31,300 transfer of pollution or not. So there's lot to be done still in this field I think 476 00:42:32,820 --> 00:42:40,480 Now I move to the second aspect that I find very intriguing. There are many more. 477 00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:47,980 But I chose two. And the second one is the transforming role of science 478 00:42:47,980 --> 00:42:52,420 and knowledge and especially of scientists in this whole transformation 479 00:42:52,420 --> 00:42:58,599 of Chinese environmental policymaking. In general you could see that, or you could 480 00:42:58,599 --> 00:43:04,660 say that we don't know a lot about scientific impact or the role of science 481 00:43:04,660 --> 00:43:08,560 and local policymaking. We have this narrative of China or the Chinese 482 00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,490 government after the reform era as a technocratic government. And you can see 483 00:43:12,490 --> 00:43:16,820 this in leaders' biographies and they suddenly all have university degrees 484 00:43:16,820 --> 00:43:21,420 and are engineers. But what actually happens in the smaller in the micro context? 485 00:43:21,420 --> 00:43:27,380 It's not so well known and don't see so many studies about it. 486 00:43:27,380 --> 00:43:32,280 We know about individuals and their initiatives, for example 487 00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:37,240 for rural development. But this day-to-day interaction between scientists and the 488 00:43:37,240 --> 00:43:42,240 government that absolutely happens, I don't see that there are many studies 489 00:43:42,240 --> 00:43:50,000 about that. And that was also inspired by the experiences we had during 490 00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:55,100 our research. We didn't start out with an interest in that but it emerged 491 00:43:55,120 --> 00:44:01,400 as something that we wanted to look in to further and that I think is pretty prominent 492 00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:07,360 especially in environmental policymaking in China now. The case, 493 00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:11,180 again there are different cases you could look at environmental impact assessments 494 00:44:11,180 --> 00:44:15,220 where scientists do contracted studies for local governments. 495 00:44:15,220 --> 00:44:20,780 One thing we found pretty fascinating is how these what I would call 496 00:44:20,780 --> 00:44:26,300 the blue sky fabrication actions work in China. So you know these 497 00:44:26,300 --> 00:44:34,820 stories when suddenly for the Olympic Games 2008 and for larger top-notch 498 00:44:34,820 --> 00:44:41,220 political events, the APEC summit in Beijing or the G20 in Hangzhou, 499 00:44:41,220 --> 00:44:48,560 you suddenly magically have blue skies over these venues. And 2008 it was still 500 00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:53,020 a little clandestine. The government has now opened up much more 501 00:44:53,020 --> 00:44:57,680 information about that they actually they do this. It's blue sky engineering 502 00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:01,400 as I would say. And they also say what they do. They shut down factories, 503 00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:05,900 they move out people, they stop construction and car driving. 504 00:45:05,900 --> 00:45:11,200 So it has become a business of its own, this blue sky fabrication I would say. 505 00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:15,520 There are terms being coined like APEC blue, APEC 蓝 [lan]. 506 00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:21,500 I just read this story by some colleagues, Brimblecombe and Zong, 2019, 507 00:45:21,510 --> 00:45:25,980 where they do a linguistic analysis of the emergence of this term for this 508 00:45:25,980 --> 00:45:31,980 phenomenon, this magical but engineered blue skies over China over specific cities. 509 00:45:31,980 --> 00:45:36,660 And the government did use that too after a while. I said we did it. 510 00:45:36,660 --> 00:45:42,980 We did APEC 蓝. But now APEC 蓝 has for some, that's what they show 511 00:45:42,980 --> 00:45:48,420 in this article where they do some social media analysis, also turned into something 512 00:45:48,420 --> 00:45:54,220 like a word, a term for saying something is a fleeting episode of something, 513 00:45:54,220 --> 00:45:56,980 a temporary phenomenon. You could say I had a romantic date 514 00:45:56,980 --> 00:46:02,800 but it was just APEC 蓝. Like everything was just vanishing again after a few days. 515 00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:08,070 That's how this is used. So you see that it steered again some public 516 00:46:08,070 --> 00:46:12,100 discussion of this phenomenon. You have this for all these different events 517 00:46:12,100 --> 00:46:19,300 that I've mentioned. There's data also showing that in advance of these events 518 00:46:19,300 --> 00:46:24,560 the government slowly tries to bring down pollution, then on the day of the event 519 00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:33,400 when you stop basically everything pollution is going rapidly down, starkly down, 520 00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:37,900 but then after the event is over everything is increasing again and sometimes 521 00:46:37,900 --> 00:46:42,640 stronger than before because factories have to make up the loss 522 00:46:42,650 --> 00:46:48,950 of production they face during the event. And this is just CNN so of course 523 00:46:48,950 --> 00:46:51,980 there's much more sophisticated analyses but I like the picture here 524 00:46:51,980 --> 00:46:59,390 because it shows these spikes and peaks. So in a way it's something like what the 525 00:46:59,390 --> 00:47:03,480 government does or what the actors do for blue sky engineering, 526 00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:06,880 something in between weather modification, like you also use 527 00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:11,240 substances to make it rain or to stop rain clouds from raining above 528 00:47:11,240 --> 00:47:14,840 or on the venue or something, and geoengineering, which is of course 529 00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:18,220 much more sensitive, where you also involves the military. 530 00:47:18,220 --> 00:47:22,960 That is also done in China. It is of course very hard to get to information about it. 531 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,900 But we again looked at blue sky fabrication, or the blue sky guarantee 532 00:47:27,900 --> 00:47:32,440 it is called in Chinese, as a governance problem. 533 00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:37,960 And what makes it special and different from the usual 534 00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:46,430 environmental policymaking is that it is a temporary measure. It's ad hoc steps 535 00:47:46,430 --> 00:47:50,450 you have to take in order to make it happen to make the sky blue. It's again 536 00:47:50,450 --> 00:47:54,660 very centralized very top-down. It requires a lot of resources. 537 00:47:54,660 --> 00:48:02,320 Factories are being shut down, you have to stop street traffic, 538 00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:08,760 you have to invite experts, I'm going to come back to that, you use the substance 539 00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:12,920 and everything. It requires a lot of coordination between entities, 540 00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:19,660 between departments that usually don't work together. And you have to steer 541 00:48:19,670 --> 00:48:22,940 everything that's going on in all these different domains, industry, traffic, 542 00:48:22,940 --> 00:48:28,790 construction, by many different actors, public or private, for one point in time. 543 00:48:28,790 --> 00:48:33,920 And this makes it very special I think. We have many cases that we can now 544 00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:39,080 compare. I mentioned some of them already, the Summer Olympics in Beijing, 545 00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:44,180 but also things like the military parade, very prominent example. 546 00:48:44,180 --> 00:48:50,480 So most of this naturally is occurring in Beijing. But you have also some other 547 00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:55,860 events like sports events in Nanjing or the G20 in Hangzhou or the expo 548 00:48:55,860 --> 00:49:03,380 in Shanghai where you have to find new ways for each new venue again 549 00:49:03,380 --> 00:49:09,120 to make it happen. Just to give you again an overview of what it all takes 550 00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:15,520 takes to make the sky blue. So what we were focusing on was this interaction 551 00:49:15,530 --> 00:49:19,940 between governmental authorities and experts because I'm going to explain in 552 00:49:19,940 --> 00:49:27,800 a minute what they needed the experts for in more detail. One thing is to close 553 00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,960 everything down. But still you need to have an overview of okay how far 554 00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:37,070 does this zone where you close things down go. What is the main 555 00:49:37,070 --> 00:49:41,640 pollution source for one place. What do you do if you close 556 00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:44,360 everything down but then suddenly there's a weather change or inversion 557 00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:47,560 or something and then you have pollution again, is there something you can still do. 558 00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:54,420 And that was very crucially why they needed scientific experts onboard. 559 00:49:54,420 --> 00:50:01,240 Major industrial facilities they have to stop their production. 560 00:50:01,240 --> 00:50:06,040 You have to manage traffic, construction, because of the dust that construction work 561 00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:11,080 is producing, has to stop for a while. You need, and that's important again, 562 00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:15,060 coordination between different localities. So for example Hangzhou 563 00:50:15,060 --> 00:50:19,000 is very close to Anhui province so we actually have to work together 564 00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:24,580 with authorities in this other province which is always a challenge in China. 565 00:50:24,580 --> 00:50:31,540 And it even includes private activities. So households, their cooking, their mobility, 566 00:50:31,540 --> 00:50:37,100 constraining the movement of city residents. You maybe 567 00:50:37,100 --> 00:50:43,000 have seen these particular measures where you either declare a holiday 568 00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:50,660 for the duration of the event and make people leave the city, maybe aided 569 00:50:50,660 --> 00:50:54,620 by some special benefits they get. For example Hangzhou residents 570 00:50:54,620 --> 00:50:58,780 were receiving tickets for tourist attractions in other provinces during 571 00:50:58,790 --> 00:51:04,130 that time in order to motivate people to leave the city. So many many many many 572 00:51:04,130 --> 00:51:11,680 different measures you have to take around this very concentrated events. 573 00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:17,620 And of course here you could also say that this is part of, you could 574 00:51:17,620 --> 00:51:24,620 tell the story of policy bundling here again because you tell people it's good 575 00:51:24,620 --> 00:51:29,060 for the air, if you leave the city there's less traffic and less people 576 00:51:29,060 --> 00:51:33,560 based pollution but of course it also makes it easier for authorities to 577 00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:39,120 do their security control. And there were policymakers who said 578 00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:45,020 yeah of course it's easier for us if we tell people this is for 579 00:51:45,020 --> 00:51:50,510 making Hangzhou a good host, having a beautiful venue, instead of 580 00:51:50,510 --> 00:51:54,530 telling people for the security of these state leaders so you have to leave, 581 00:51:54,530 --> 00:51:59,510 it's too hard to control all of you on the street. So again there's maybe the 582 00:51:59,510 --> 00:52:06,650 small aspect of policy bundling here again involved. But the thing is the main 583 00:52:06,650 --> 00:52:13,730 goal here is really to clear up the skies for a beautiful venue. When we 584 00:52:13,730 --> 00:52:18,300 wrote about it and we wrote mainly about the Hangzhou case, the G20 summit. 585 00:52:18,300 --> 00:52:23,620 We are now preparing a manuscript where compare different events of this sort. 586 00:52:23,620 --> 00:52:27,940 But we wrote about it, we had to find some concepts which could best describe what 587 00:52:27,950 --> 00:52:32,930 we see there. And for us it is sort of a campaign style enforcement policy that 588 00:52:32,930 --> 00:52:38,780 is going on here. Because campaign or campaign style enforcement would have 589 00:52:38,780 --> 00:52:42,780 a clearly defined goal. It has strong political sponsorship, 590 00:52:42,780 --> 00:52:46,200 a high degree of urgency for a very confined period of time, 591 00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:51,920 a tightly coordinated operation, and the very clear pooling of resources 592 00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:59,820 with some degrees of public involvement and mobilization. We then amended this 593 00:52:59,820 --> 00:53:05,340 looking at these very particular events of blue sky fabrication 594 00:53:05,340 --> 00:53:10,720 and we actually thought that so of course that all had to happen. 595 00:53:10,720 --> 00:53:16,620 The campaign is for the goal or it is for an even shorter period of time. 596 00:53:16,620 --> 00:53:23,640 So campaigns usually have this temporary nature often but you usually 597 00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:28,740 you still give people some years to achieve these goals. Here it's much more 598 00:53:28,740 --> 00:53:33,930 urgent and what we find really impressive or quite insightful was this 599 00:53:33,930 --> 00:53:41,430 expert input in the process. I'm going to speed up a little so I don't use up too 600 00:53:41,430 --> 00:53:43,440 much time for our discussion. 601 00:53:50,380 --> 00:53:55,180 So for once it's interesting to see what actually had to be done 602 00:53:55,180 --> 00:53:59,220 when these expert task forces were formed. 603 00:53:59,220 --> 00:54:04,400 You do these things in many different places and you suddenly see 604 00:54:04,410 --> 00:54:09,540 that of course these places have very different contexts in which they have to 605 00:54:09,540 --> 00:54:14,820 act in order to bring down pollution. So while Beijing and these events in Beijing 606 00:54:14,820 --> 00:54:18,220 they have to deal with a very high degree of average pollution, 607 00:54:18,220 --> 00:54:22,940 cities like Qingdao, where one of the last of these big events was held, they usually 608 00:54:22,940 --> 00:54:26,940 are within the national standards so they don't have to do all that much 609 00:54:26,940 --> 00:54:31,940 in order to get the skies blue. You need to identify the pollution sources 610 00:54:31,940 --> 00:54:37,060 and the interesting thing is that this task force of experts is usually 611 00:54:37,060 --> 00:54:41,480 the experts who have a lot of experience in Beijing and who then travel around 612 00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:47,920 as the task force for blue skies around in China and consult with 613 00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:52,720 the local scientists who are involved. So there's a lot of institutional history 614 00:54:52,720 --> 00:54:59,060 or learning among the same group of actors for this sort of policy. 615 00:54:59,060 --> 00:55:05,320 And then you amend. As I just said you learn how far do you have to, for example, 616 00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:10,620 draw these zones of halting industrial pollution in order to keep a venue 617 00:55:10,620 --> 00:55:16,400 smoke-free. That is adapted over time. So the actual diffusion of knowledge 618 00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:22,080 and the learning process is within this group of scientists. 619 00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:26,480 They have a lot of power, I would say, because the local government 620 00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:30,100 really depends on them, especially the places that are not Beijing. 621 00:55:30,100 --> 00:55:32,740 So Hangzhou, Qingdao when they for the very first time 622 00:55:32,740 --> 00:55:37,340 have to make the skies blue for an event they heavily heavily depend on 623 00:55:37,340 --> 00:55:45,280 this expert input in order to plan for that. So we said that while this action, 624 00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:49,560 this making the sky blue action, is usually ridiculed, of course there's a reason 625 00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:55,340 for that. There's a lot of waste of a lot of resources and there's limited general 626 00:55:55,350 --> 00:55:59,730 implications that we can draw from it. But especially this science policy 627 00:55:59,730 --> 00:56:05,160 interfaces that we observed when we talk to for example some of the scientists 628 00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:10,380 which are usually involved in these task forces, they give room for some insights 629 00:56:10,380 --> 00:56:15,220 that I think are pretty interesting. So of course you produce a lot of data. 630 00:56:15,220 --> 00:56:19,260 You suddenly have a map of pollution sources around the venue that you before 631 00:56:19,260 --> 00:56:24,080 did not have. You have installed a lot more measuring equipment than before. 632 00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:29,160 You train people in the local environmental policy bureaus to read these data 633 00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:34,040 and to do more modeling than they usually did. So there's an increase 634 00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:40,760 in knowledge of also the local officials. And they eventually explained that 635 00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:45,680 they came to a bit better modeling for what are now called the 636 00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:50,480 red smog alerts in cities like Beijing based on this increase in data 637 00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:59,820 that they drew from these measures. So overall I think there is, the effect of this 638 00:56:59,820 --> 00:57:05,900 for governance it makes, you could say, this very harsh measures a bit more 639 00:57:05,900 --> 00:57:10,600 sophisticated over time. Measures become much more selective and flexible. 640 00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:17,020 You don't do an all-out halting of production or a total stop of all traffic. 641 00:57:17,020 --> 00:57:21,480 You know then better what to do for certain reasons. 642 00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:26,500 And we can show that when we compare the different events over time. 643 00:57:26,500 --> 00:57:31,600 We see also, and the scientists involved have explained to us, that for example 644 00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:37,180 the reduced rigor that these measures are used for, for example, 645 00:57:37,180 --> 00:57:41,620 for the Lianghui, the big political events in Beijing that we see over the last years, 646 00:57:41,620 --> 00:57:49,900 are because for one it becomes less legitimate to do these harsh campaigns 647 00:57:49,900 --> 00:57:55,850 anymore for domestic meetings. but it's also because they have 648 00:57:55,850 --> 00:57:59,060 found different ways of more pointed interventions in order 649 00:57:59,060 --> 00:58:04,420 to reduce air pollution. It's overall a black box but I think there's a lot of 650 00:58:04,420 --> 00:58:09,540 room to do more studies on science policy interfaces 651 00:58:09,540 --> 00:58:14,220 in Chinese environmental governance. That brings me to my last remarks. 652 00:58:14,220 --> 00:58:20,200 So what do I hope that I have conveyed to you over the last hour? 653 00:58:22,100 --> 00:58:29,520 I can only repeat my argument and I just scratched the surface. 654 00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:33,140 There's a lot more data in the publications of course. But here I wanted to tell 655 00:58:33,140 --> 00:58:37,320 more of a story. And I think there has been a qualitative change in environmental 656 00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:42,620 policymaking in China. And I would trace this back to the apocalypse 657 00:58:42,620 --> 00:58:49,820 and its effect because when you look into the details of the developments over time 658 00:58:49,820 --> 00:58:54,840 you see this what I call the realignment of political concern, scientific knowledge, 659 00:58:54,840 --> 00:59:01,420 and public worries and activities over time. And this has transformed air pollution 660 00:59:01,420 --> 00:59:07,260 visibly. But also when we look at the specific tools that are used, 661 00:59:07,260 --> 00:59:12,320 and actually then also triggered substantial changes in Chinese environmental politics 662 00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:19,860 as a whole, and theoretically you could say it's a mixture of what some authors 663 00:59:19,860 --> 00:59:25,120 would call consultative authoritarianism, where you consult with societal actors 664 00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:30,080 for example in the dialogue forums, and more authoritarian form of top-down 665 00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:38,940 technocratic rule sort of policymaking. It's a mixed picture. The local tools, 666 00:59:38,940 --> 00:59:42,200 the local measures are sometimes successful, sometimes they can 667 00:59:42,200 --> 00:59:46,420 take very odd forms. You could for example say so the car driving ban 668 00:59:46,420 --> 00:59:51,650 is not actually an air pollution policy at all. You have these examples 669 00:59:51,650 --> 00:59:58,520 where cities in the northeast have banned coal use from one day to another, 670 00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:04,519 or very ad hoc, so that people were shivering because they lacked another 671 01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:09,640 source of fuel for heating their homes. So it can have all sorts of outcomes 672 01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:17,080 and effects and we can only hope that these pointed demands for quick 673 01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:20,940 and ad-hoc action will transform into something more sustainable. 674 01:00:20,940 --> 01:00:25,920 I said the smog episodes were reduced. I think there again you can say 675 01:00:25,920 --> 01:00:32,500 we see less of these episodes now. There have been these news 676 01:00:32,500 --> 01:00:38,780 coming out of China now that because of COVID-19 and the reduced production 677 01:00:38,780 --> 01:00:43,200 but also reduced mobility among the population there's less smoke 678 01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:47,840 in northeastern China but you have other stories from 2019 for example 679 01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:51,360 where you saw a return of these heavy episodes. I think these are very 680 01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:54,100 pointed impressions. We have to see developments over time. 681 01:00:54,100 --> 01:01:00,380 And then of course that is only dealing with the smog in this particulate matter 682 01:01:00,380 --> 01:01:05,240 air pollution. But there are other pollution sources in the air or pollutants in the air. 683 01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:09,900 Methane, indoor air pollution, that was a very important topic for our group 684 01:01:09,900 --> 01:01:14,040 showing how much of an exposure you have indoors especially in rural China 685 01:01:14,040 --> 01:01:18,860 where you have less action being taken against it, and ozone, something that 686 01:01:18,860 --> 01:01:24,760 the scientists we talked to actually they told the local governments 687 01:01:24,769 --> 01:01:27,949 they worked with that ozone is a big problem. For example in Hangzhou 688 01:01:27,949 --> 01:01:31,720 ground-level ozone. But because it wasn't in the target list of local officials 689 01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:37,960 it wasn't tackled at that time. So I also hope I showed you some 690 01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:41,920 of the avenues and some of the fields that are still very worth looking into 691 01:01:41,920 --> 01:01:46,600 as a researcher. And with this I thank you for your attention.