Beyond the small world: Chinese environmental NGOs and confrontational public campaigns.

摘要

While Chinese environmental NGOs built a self-censored, self-sufficient, and self-contained "environmental small world" in the 1990s, they launched public campaigns directly challenging powerful opponents in the early 2000s. Examining how environmental NGOs went beyond the small world they created, this dissertation addresses two questions: (1) what factors weighed more in defining the timing and outcome of confrontational public campaigns by environmental NGOs in contemporary China?; and (2) what impacts on the existing state-society relation did environmental NGOs exert through these campaigns? Comparing three public campaigns against environmentally-unfriendly hydro projects, this dissertation suggests that NGOs' alliances within the state bureaucracy played the most crucial role in deciding the timing and outcome of confrontational environmental campaigns. Environmental NGOs' dependence on the alliance also limited their potential for checking arbitrary state polices and abusive market behaviors.