By Zhang Ye
In his video address during the 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) virtual session on January 17, Chinese President Xi Jinping once again emphasized the importance of strengthening international cooperation to combat climate change. In recent years, China has continually demonstrated a strong sense of responsibility, determination and ambition in tackling the global challenge. This is evidenced not only by its signature commitments to achieve peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060, but also in its vows to contribute Chinese wisdom and knowledge to global climate governance.
In fields like green development and climate governance, there has been an epistemological suppression from some Western countries toward China, in the form of willfully ignoring China’s voices or twisting the narrative. To be sure, the United States and others seek Chinese cooperation on climate issues, as we saw during the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the UK, last year, and inclusion is vital; yet we should never equate this with recognition and respect.
Suppression
Western countries have dominated the production of the related knowledge since the climate crisis was first noted. On the one hand, scientific research as of yet cannot escape Western-centrism. For example, the series of reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change, were mainly authored by researchers hailing from Western countries and work from Western academia was more often referenced than research from developing countries. This would allow the West to have more power in shaping the agenda for climate negotiations, resulting in the voices and appeals from developing countries being marginalized and ignored.
On the other hand, the current global environmental governance philosophy is framed under the Western ethos of civilization, advocating science and technology, rationality, bourgeois democracy, liberalism, freedom and individualism. This idea, which allowed for technological revolutions and rapid development, has been endowed with epistemological privilege from the 18th century onward, intensifying Western supremacy worldwide.
Yet many argue that the ecological disasters today to large extent result from this Western enlightenment tradition that encourages economic and national competition, mass production and consumption, and unlimited growth. In addition, this status is achieved through the suppression of other forms of knowledge deemed “unscientific,” e.g., indigenous and religious knowledge, in the form of Western epistemological colonialism and even “epistemicide.”
China is by no means beyond the influence of such colonialism. Since the introduction of the “Yellow Peril” in the 19th century, China has long been the imagined inferior “other” with an irrational culture that does not conform to and threatens the Western mindset.
When it comes to environmental issues, there are three types of suppression that invalidate China’s experience and knowledge. The first is the ignorance of the system of values based on Chinese civilization that entails different visions and wisdom. The second is “China’s environmental threat,” a derivative of the “China threat” rhetoric, which exaggerates the country’s role in creating global environmental disasters. One example is a list titled China’s Environmental Abuses, released by the U.S. Embassy and consulates in China in September 2020. It claims that China “threatens the global economy and global health” and exports a “willful disregard for the environment.” The third manifests as a deep doubt about the determination, efficiency and legitimacy of the strong environmental governance led by the Chinese Government. This is characterized by the ongoing critique that China’s environmental governance is “undemocratic” and contains “human rights violations.”
The above misgivings about China’s determination to pursue ecological progress present a willful dismissal of Chinese knowhow that contains its worldviews, governance philosophies and methodologies.
Chinese expertise
China’s wisdom and knowledge can be a powerful engine for rethinking environmental challenges, the human-nature relationship and environmental governance. In fact, scientists in ancient China already traced the climate change phenomena. For example, Shen Kuo, a scientist of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), speculated about changes in climate through fossils and plants in his book Mengxi Bitan. In the 1970s, based on historical documents and archaeological materials, meteorologist Zhu Kezhen examined how climate change had influenced the succession of dynasties and caused social unrest. These historical records and research efforts not only supply rich materials and experience to understand climate crises today, but also challenge the common view that related studies originate from Western academia.
The environmental governance embraced by the Chinese Government also has its roots in traditional philosophy. In his recent WEF speech, President Xi used the Chinese idiom “draining a pond to get fish” to describe sacrificing the environment to achieve development, and “climbing a tree to catch fish” to highlight the futility of environmental protection at the cost of growth, stressing both ecological conservation and economic progress.
This illustration, together with his theory that “green is gold,” also translated as “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets,” shows a dialectical unity between ecological protection and economic growth, and between humankind and nature. This dialectical thought, rooted in Chinese philosophy and the Communist Party of China’s worldview and methodology, stands in stark contrast to the linear way of thinking dominating Western philosophy. It contributes greatly to our understanding and managing various challenges implicated in sustainable development, offering an important alternative to the logic of “man dominating nature” under the either/or dualism, arguably one of the root causes of the ecological turmoil we face today.
Other ideas, such as a community with a shared future for humanity, people-centered governance, and following words with actions, can also be traced back to Chinese traditional philosophy. These in turn can help better address the key issues of building cooperation, achieving justice, and taking actions in global climate governance.
Recognition
Both scholars and the Chinese Government have realized the importance of improving China’s role in leading climate governance, and global governance in general, through increasing participation in climate knowledge production and reversing the Western discourse about China.
It is, of course, important to amplify China’s voices on the global stage. Even more important, however, is that Western countries open their ears and minds to these voices. This is urgent in two ways. First, as the world’s largest developing country, China plays a critical role in reducing carbon emissions. While urging China to take climate responsibilities, Western countries should work with China, particularly when China has already committed to working with other countries in the fight against climate change. The first step to build effective cooperation would be listening to the ideas, experiences and solutions from China, a country with a different epistemological tradition.
Second, given that the Western conception of human advancement has been a major cause of ecological crises, a community with a shared knowledge embracing various value systems from different traditions becomes crucial.
Recognition of non-Western knowledge would require eliminating both the sense of Western superiority and the bias toward knowhow from other cultures. However, in the case of China, this seems particularly difficult to achieve against the increased stigmatization of the nation. In any event, there is no time to waste in fighting climate change. -The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News Exchange Item
