When science controversies encounter political opportunities-Comparing GMO, hydropower and nuclear power contentions in contemporary China

Abstract

Based on three years’ field study and participatory observation, this dissertation traces the development of significant science and technology (S&T) controversies – hydropower resistance, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) dispute, and nuclear power debate – in contemporary China and analyzed communication, sociopolitical and knowledge factors associated with their emergence and evolvement. A significant contribution of the current study is to adopt social movement theories to examine the appearance, amplification, evolution and the development of science controversies while fully considering communication and knowledge control patterns. My study reveals that in China, major public S&T controversies are far more than a product of poor public understanding of science or people’s emotional rejection of potentially hazardous technologies. Instead, both the widespread GMO controversy and the relatively more elitist campaigns against hydropower and nuclear power resulted from a combination of factors including the changing media environment, emerging political opportunities, the varying knowledge-control regime, and activists’ strategic and structural treatment of political opportunities and their effort to break existing knowledge-control regimes. The resistance to hydropower controversy was a concentrated reflection of rising environmentalism and environmental NGOs which have effectively utilized emerging public environmental awareness, bureaucratic fragmentation, media needs for higher public attention, and shackled knowledge-control regimes, though given the remoteness of the protesting sites and limited public awareness, anti-hydropower activism did not show a high level of public participation. Anti-hydropower activism nearly halted every targeted dam in China. The GMO controversy, on the other hand, was widely spread in Chinese society, although few established civil society groups were involved, and though scientists increased their efforts to maintain the knowledge-control regime. The fragile science-politics alliance, the fragmentation within central leadership and grave public concerns all created a favorable political opportunity structure for anti-GMO activists. As a result, China’s commercialization of GM crops has been effectively suspended. By contrast, resistance to nuclear power faced both a narrow political opportunity structure and a robust knowledge-control regime, thanks to its link to military purposes, its historical glory, and its strong business-politics alliance, as well as lack of public attention. As a result, the debate only helped to postpone construction of new nuclear power plants temporarily. This dissertation shows entirely consistent patterns in the different controversies, no matter which theoretical approach is used, indicating the appropriateness of synthesizing these approaches. It will not only enable scholars to understand contemporary science controversies in China more comprehensively but also provide a chance to explore the integration of different theoretical approaches.