New Trends in Sustainable Environmental Governance in Mainland China. The Zhejiang Case

The trade-off between environmental sustainability and economic growth has been the focus of an extensive debate in the developing world and in this debate China is no exception, as it moves away from a single-minded growth-only policy toward a more sustainable economic model. The reason for this new policy trend has to be found in civil society’s rising environmental awareness and the growing accountability by local governments and multinational companies. Interviews with civil society and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) mainly based in Zhejiang province, together with secondhand data from national online database show that a political feedback mechanism is possible also in a non-democratic country like China, and despite the Chinese political framework lacking an accountability mechanism, the civil society growing environmental concerns and multinational companies’ reputation abroad have indirectly forced policymakers to act toward tighter environmental regulation. In conclusion, this study shows that the Chinese middle class is not fully passive in its relationship with the local government, but it activates when its key interest is threatened, and as the Chinese middle class grows rich and educated and the economic growth slows down, a similar accountability mechanism could be replicated concerning issues where political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not questioned like economic or social issues.