Environment

Surge in China carbon emissions

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Source: Unearthed (5/30/18)
Dramatic surge in China carbon emissions signals climate danger
With China’s CO2 pollution on the rise, is it time to panic?
By Zach Boren and Harri Lammi

The continued rise of China’s CO2 emissions is unexpected. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

China’s carbon emissions growth has accelerated since the beginning of the year, leading to warnings that the country could be headed for its largest annual increase in climate pollution since 2011.

Led by increased demand for coal, oil and gas, China’s CO2 emissions for the first three months of 2018 were 4% higher than they were for the same period in 2017, according to an Unearthed analysis of new government figures.

Analysts have suggested the country’s carbon emissions could rise this year by 5% — the largest annual increase in seven years, back when the airpocalypse was at its peak. Continue reading →

China blocks earthquake memorial service (1)

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One can compare what Charlene Makley wrote about the statist ‘spectacle of compassion’ and how Tibetan buddhists’ contributions were curtailed and obscured after the earthquake:

Charlene Makley (2014). “Spectacular Compassion: ‘Natural’ Disasters And National Mourning In China’s Tibet.” Critical Asian Studies, 46:3, 371-404, DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2014.935132

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

China blocks earthquake memorial service

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Source: NYT (5/12/18)
China Blocks a Memorial Service to Sichuan Earthquake Victims
查看简体中文版 | 查看繁體中文版
By Chris Buckley

Attendees on Saturday marked a minute of silence in front of the former Xuankou Middle School, destroyed in the 2008 earthquake.CreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIJING — On the 10th anniversary of China’s deadliest earthquake in decades, the police on Saturday detained an outspoken pastor and blocked a planned service to mourn the 70,000 or more people killed when whole towns and villagers were crushed.

The anniversary of the earthquake, which rippled across Sichuan Province in southwest China on May 12, 2008, has been a time of renewed mourning for survivors, while the ruling Communist Party has used the date to praise China’s reconstruction of devastated areas. Continue reading →

After-shocks of the 2008 earthquake

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Source: NY Review of Books (May 9, 2018)
After-Shocks of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake
By Ian Johnson

Ruins from one of the most significant earthquakes in Chinese history, pictured a month before the tenth anniversary of the earthquake, Beichuan county, Mianyang, Sichuan, China, April 5, 2018. VCG/VCG via Getty Images

The province of Sichuan is a microcosm of China. Its east is flat, prosperous, and densely settled by ethnic Chinese. Its mountainous west is populated by poorer minorities, but possesses resources that help make the east rich.

In Sichuan, the highlands’ bounty is water and silt, which rush down from the Tibetan Plateau to the plains below through an ingenious set of irrigation waterworks at the town of Dujiangyan. Soon after this system was built, some 2,300 years ago, the intensive agriculture that it made possible turned the region into one of China’s economic dynamos, producing so much wealth that it helped the first emperor of China consolidate numerous fragmented states into one powerful realm. Continue reading →

Rare bird gift to Japan

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Source: SCMP (5/7/18)
The two rare birds that could give a lift to China’s ties with Japan
Beijing might announce the donation of a pair of crested ibises during the Chinese premier’s trip to Tokyo, the first gift of its kind in more than a decade
Kyodo News

The crested ibis was thought to be extinct in the wild until seven were found in Yang county in 1981. Photo: Xinhua

China is expected to agree to donate a pair of crested ibises to Japan during a summit meeting later this week in the hope that it will mark the two countries’ improving ties, bilateral diplomatic sources said.

If Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang agree to the donation in Tokyo on Wednesday, it will be China’s first donation of the endangered birds to Japan in 11 years. Continue reading →

Chinese Ecologies

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Chinese Ecologies
An International Symposium on the Environment and Indigeneity
Harvard University
April 6-7, 2018

Schedule

April 6
Tsai Auditorium, CGIS-South, 1730 Cambridge Street)

13:00-13:10 Welcome Remarks

13:10-14:25 Panel 1: Articulating the Polemics of the Anthropocene
Chair: Karen Thornber (Harvard University)

Haiyan Lee (Stanford University)
Through Thick and Thin: The Romance of the Species in the Anthropocene

Christopher Coggins (Bard College at Simon’s Rock)
Rethinking “Environment” and “Indigenous:” the Persistence of Imperial Indigeneity

Qilin Long (Guangzhou University)
Ecological Disaster and the Writing Style of Chinese Contemporary Literature in the New Century Continue reading →

China wins first battle in war against pollution

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Source: Sup China (3/12/18)
China wins first battle in ‘war against pollution’
By Lucas Niewenhuis

For many years now, China has struggled to balance its economic development with environmental sustainability. The problem became especially unavoidable, undeniable, and irresistible for overseas media in 2013, when Beijing and its surroundings faced the “airpocalypse,” an all-encompassing blanket of smog in historic proportions. By 2014, Premier Li Keqiang vowed a “war against pollution,” a proposal whose seriousness was met with some skepticism at the time. The ambivalence of the government was proved, some argued, when a 2015 documentary called Under the Dome detailed the intractability of the problem of air pollution, and was censored after a week — long enough to raise awareness, but not long enough, perhaps, to birth an environmental movement for lasting change.

Now it is clear that air pollution, particularly in China’s largest cities, is rapidly declining. Continue reading →

Sino-British botanical exchanges in the 18th-19th centuries

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I would like to introduce this incoming talk about the botanical interactions between Britain and China in the 18th century which I will co-present on March 24th in Oxford.

Botanical Art, Botanical Commerce: Britain meets China at the Dawn of Modernity
Oxford (United Kingdom) March 24th (12:45)

Speakers:

Former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew Sir Peter Crane, author and expert in the history of science, medicine and culture Jordan Goodman and expert in Sino-British exchanges and China Trade paintings Josepha Richard discuss the John Bradby Blake collection.

Topic:

The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA, contains the archive of 18th-century East India Company supercargo John Bradby Blake. Blake first visited Canton in 1767/68 as a trader and, before his death in 1773, his collaboration with the Chinese artist Mauk-Sow-U produced over 150 striking and botanically accurate paintings of Chinese plants. These paintings and the associated archives provide details of an interesting life and previously little-known dimensions of late 18th-century social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese, including British attempts to secure living plants that could prove useful at home and in its colonies. Continue reading →

Animal Writing in Taiwan Literature

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Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, Issue Number 41: Special Issue on “Animal Writing in Taiwan Literature” is available now. See the link for more information. Please also see the table of contents below.

http://www.press.ntu.edu.tw/index.php?act=book&refer=ntup_book00997

Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series
Issue Number 41, January, 2018
ISBN： 978-986-350-262-3
GPN： 1010700001

Publisher: US-Taiwan Literature Foundation & National Taiwan University Press

台灣文學英譯叢刊（No. 41）： 台灣文學的動物書寫專輯

Kuo-ch’ing Tu （杜國清）、 Terence Russell（羅德仁） 編
Chia-ju Chang (張嘉如), Guest-Editor (客座編輯)

Table of Contents:

Foreword to the Special Issue on Animal Writing in Taiwan Literature／Kuo-ch’ing Tu
「台灣文學的動物書寫專輯」卷頭語／杜國清 Continue reading →

Animal rights activism in China

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Source: CPI Analysis (3/5/18)
China’s Voice for the Voiceless
By Peter J. Li

In the summer of 2017, I wrote for CNN-International that China was mired in a “civil war” over dogs. Two camps of people who have opposing views on the role of dogs have clashed since the final years of the 1990s. Animal lovers and their supporters believe that China has long passed the days when people had to eat anything edible for survival. To them, dogs are no food but companions. Dog meat is no traditional food. Twice in the country’s dynastic past, Chinese emperors tried to outlaw dog meat consumption. This position is not shared by the opposing camp. Dog meat traders and their supporters believe that dogs are like livestock animals. Consumption of dog meat is no difference from consumption of beef, pork and fish. They see dog meat consumption as a right, a “human right.”  If Westerners can devour beef, foie gras, horse meat, seal meat, whale and dolphin meat, what moral right do they and their Chinese lackeys have to criticise dog meat consumption? Continue reading →

Environmental Humanities, China and Japan–cfp

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“Environmental Humanities, China and Japan”
CFP: Roundtable at the Modern Language Association convention
Chicago, IL, January 3-6, 2019

This roundtable considers recent developments in the intersection of modern Chinese and Japanese studies and the environmental humanities, broadly defined. The roundtable is organized by the Modern and Contemporary Chinese forum and cosponsored by the Japanese since 1900 forum.

Please send a 300-word abstract, a short bibliography, and a short bio to Christopher K. Tong (christopherktong@gmail.com) by March 9, 2018. While MLA membership is not required at this stage, presenters will be asked to join the MLA as part of the proposal process.

Ecologizing Taiwan–cfp

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Ecologizing Taiwan: Nature, Society, Culture–Call for Papers
Co-edited by David Wang and Andrea Bachner

The International Journal of Taiwan Studies, cosponsored by the European Association of Taiwan Studies and Academia Sinica, is a principal outlet for the dissemination of cutting-edge research on Taiwan. We are currently inviting submissions for a special issue titled Ecologizing Taiwan: Nature, Society, Culture.

This special issue proposes Taiwan as a point of departure to situate ecological thought and think beyond contemporary bio- and eco-politics. Extending the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns, we propose to put all we do, think, and feel about Taiwan in the context of the whole to which we belong: the human, nonhuman, and post-human Sinosphere as well as the earth. Continue reading →

Ban in China’s coal country

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Source: NYT (2/10/18)
In China’s Coal Country, a Ban Brings Blue Skies, Cold Homes
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

A black market coal store in Qiaoli, China. The nearby city of Linfen was once one of the world’s most heavily polluted cities. CreditGilles Sabrié for The New York Times

QIAOLI, China — A monument to China’s efforts to wean itself from coal rises on the outskirts of this village deep in the heart of the nation’s coal country.

Scores of old coal stoves have been dumped in a lot, removed by government decree in recent months in favor of cleaner-burning natural gas furnaces.

“Defend blue sky and breathe together,” an exhortation painted on the brick wall surrounding the lot says. “Manage haze and work together.” Continue reading →

Becoming Environmental–cfp

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Please see the below CFP for a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, based out of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, Montréal.

Deadline for submission is March 31, 2018.

Call for Submissions: “Becoming Environmental: Media, Logistics, and Ecological Change”
Special Issue of  Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies

Synoptique is inviting submissions for an upcoming special issue entitled “Becoming Environmental: Media, Logistics, and Ecological Change.” The focus of this issue will be on the increasing entanglements of global economies of extraction and the circulation of media. The title of this issue is inspired by Jennifer Gabrys’ “becoming environmental” of sensory technologies (2016), where computational media becomes constitutive to the very environment, and subject formation within it, rather than simply operating in the environment as a backdrop. We propose to expand this imperative to the distinctive ways media—from computation, infrastructures, screens, technologies of circulation, and different modes of visualization—become environmental, remaining attentive to how these emerging human/nonhuman relations are constantly reconfigured, if not naturalized, via the state, global market, or other ideological projects. Continue reading →

The eco-conscious photography of Duzi

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Source: Sup China (12/14/17)
The Big Picture: The Eco-Conscious Photography Of Duzi
By THOMAS BIRD
“Science can help us understand the facts, but art communicates them in a way that gets people really talking.”

From “Marine Reclamation”

The 2017 Lishui Photography Festival 丽水摄影节 in Zhejiang Province was held in November with the kind of razzmatazz one has come to expect from a large-scale Chinese event bearing the official seal. Festivities began with the obligatory opening ceremony comprising predictable song-and-dance routines punctuated by vaguely jingoistic speeches from local honchos. The pomp set the tone for a festival gigantic in scale: More than 1,500 exhibitions infiltrated all quarters of Lishui 丽水, from North American exhibitions curated by New Yorker Jim Ramer to community photography projects peppering the alleyways of the old town. Legions of volunteers equipped with high-school English were on hand to point lost festival attendees in the right direction, while public buses were free, ensuring visitors could get from photo seminar to workshop to bar with as little bother as a third-tier Chinese city might otherwise cause. Continue reading →