Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

virtually impossible. Indeed, some Chinese economists endorse the
kind of land confiscation that is currently taking place as China’s
necessary ‘land enclosure’, comparable with what occurred in the UK
during its early stage of industrialization.
Environmental destruction
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
Another salient characteristic of Chinese capitalism in the 1980s and
1990s was the almost total disregard, whether intentional or unintentional,
for the environment. The following is the testimonial of Pan Yu,
Vice-Minister of China’s State Environment Protection Administration:
This spring, the State Environmental Protection Administration
produced the country’s first official estimate of GDP adjusted
downward for environmental losses. According to these calculations,
it would cost $84 billion to clean up the pollution
produced in 2004, or 3 per cent of GDP for that year. But more
realistic estimates put environmental damage at 8–13 per cent of
China’s GDP growth each year, which means that China has lost
almost everything it has gained since the late 1970s due to
pollution.
(Pan 2006)
Ordinary citizens in China nowadays cannot be sure of what is in the
food they consume every day. It has been suggested that athletes at the
2008 Beijing Olympics may show drug positive in tests simply because
of their consumption of antibiotics and hormone-induced food. One
Chinese official suggested that all the food to be used for the Olympics
should be tested on mice first, and the competitors should be asked not
to eat outside the Olympic Villages (Li Yang 2006).
It could be argued that environmental problems are less severe in
more developed countries only because these countries have already
passed the early stage of modernity. This indeed is a position that the
Chinese neoliberals take, as discussed in Gao (2004) and elsewhere in
this book. In other words, develop first and clean up later is the
answer. Environmental degradation takes place in other developing
capitalist countries as well. However, what makes the Chinese case
different is that state ownership of rivers, mountains, and land is often
treated as equivalent to no ownership and no responsibility. The whim
of a bureaucrat in charge, or a successful bribe to the same effect, can
set off a project or an event with tremendous environmental consequences.
It is little wonder that most of the worst polluted cities in the
world are currently located in China. The water in most of China’s
lakes and rivers is undrinkable because of pollution. ‘Environmental
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