The Ecological Movement in China and the Influence of Constructive Postmodernism

Xiaohua Wang

The topic of my lecture is “The Ecological Movement  in China and the Influence of Constructive Postmodernism”. Influenced by Buddhism and later Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, I personally became a deep ecologist in 1994. From that time on, studying and promoting ecological movement has become the most important part of my life. The ecological movement gives me a new way of look at  the world and provides me with a lot of chances to enrich my relations with the others and the nature. To give a lecture here is also the result of my commitment to ecological movement. Everyone who attends my lecture today has special karma with me. So, I would like to extend my deep gratitude to everyone here. My special thanks must go to Dr. Cobb and Dr. John Quiring or inviting me to lecture at Center for Process Studies. I also appreciate Center’s support of me.

What I want to mainly introduce is the current situation of the ecological movement in China. In order to understand the situation, it is better first to briefly introduce the economical situation in China because maybe some of you don’t know China today very well. For example, some Westerners still think that the major problem in China is shortage. In the book written by Lester Brown--Who Will Feed China?-- the author worries about that the population growth combined with a rising standard of living means China has to import a great deal of grains, which will drive the price of grains up and work great hardship on the global poor. Lester Brown’s opinion shows his ignorant of China. Because –one problem of China’s agriculture is the surplus of grains at present. In the northeast of china, there are too many grains to find granary to store them. The surplus of grains drives the price of grains to crossed low is one of the reasons why some peasants are poor, but most of the relative poor peasants still have enough food. Therefore, I want to tell everyone here the time of shortage in china has passed. The economic reform has eliminated the phenomenon of shortage until 1990s. At the same time, the economy of China finished the transition from seller’s market to buyer’s market. The enterpriser and businessman need to study the customer’s consumer psychology, the idea that the customer is God has been accepted by nearly all of the Chinese enterpriser and businessman. In order to gain customers, the enterpriser and businessman not only want to meet the needs of customers, but also to cater customer’s desire for non-essential consumption. The forming of consumerism is the symbol of progress in the eyes of many Chinese economists, but I think it is the very source of China’s eco-crisis today exactly.

Frankly speaking, China has paid enormous cost for the present economic growth. To some extent, the bumper harvest of agriculture and the surplus of grains are the result of excess land reclamation and using of chemical fertilizer and pesticide that cause desertification or pollution. Corresponding with the good news of grain increases, the sandstorm in the north of China is more and more serious. March of this year, the north of China meets the most serious sandstorm in recent years. Sky, street, trees, building, faces of walkers had all become yellow. While agriculture increase pays larger and larger ecological cost, the pursuit of industry modernization has caused serious environmental pollution. Air, river, ocean, land are not clean, the speed of species extinction shocks the people who have ecology consciousness. The ecology predicament of western countries in the modernization of the past and present is duplicated in China. Most Chinese scholars regarded it as inevitable cost, the destiny, of any nation pursuing modernization. But the deep ecologists all over the world hold different and even opposite views. China ecological movement originated from the reflection of eco-crisis: we have only one China, man have only one earth, if the so called development make us lose the only homeland in the boundless universe, then , what is the meaning of development? Therefore, the ecology consciousness became a component of Chinese culture, though it is still marginal.

The ecological movement in China develops in two dimensions: the official level and the folk level.

The  ecological movement at official level mainly focus on environmental protection which purpose is sustainable development. Its final goal is to promote the status of China in the international competitive pattern. So, in a sense, to protect the ecology is the competitive strategy of the nation, it connected with utilitarian calculation at the beginning, which is the common characteristic of official ecology protection all over the world. Therefore, bargaining on the ecology duty among the nations is unavoidable. President bush refused to sign on “Kyoto Protocol” give a lot of countries the pretext to bargain. The nationalists in China seized the chance to criticize that the Chinese deep ecologists are too naive to cope with the complicated situation of the world. The official ecology protection is doomed to be uncompleted because of nationalism, economism and the intense international competitive pattern. So, though I lay hopes on governments ecological transition of policy making, I pay more attention to the folk ecological movement  at present. 

Despite china’s ecological movement cause has already begun, it is still non-stream culture and practice. In a lot of Chinese people’s view, deep ecologists are queer and manneristic. When I was a doctor candidate in Nanjing University, my schoolmates often have joke with me: you are eco-freak, why do you eat meat? The attitude toward deep ecologist is a bit better now in China, but most people still don’t pay attention to them. The mainstream folk ideological trend in china is liberalism and nationalism. Both haven’t pay enough concern to ecological movement cause, some of there principle are even contrary to ecological movement. In order to make my point of view clear, I’ll introduce and analyze them briefly.

1,liberalism—It has great influence in China intellectual circle and has formed the tendency of contending with nationalism. The basic idea of liberalism is that only the economy freedom can guarantee the political freedom, so, China should establish a through market economy system, promote political reform through marketization. Most liberalist afraid that if we recommend ecological protection too early that the Chinese market development will be hindered. This is the reason why they don’t pay attention to china ecological movement movement.

2,Nationalism—most of the nationalists in China are known as “the new left”. They worry about the split up of the rich and the poor, hold that the government should intervene the market through macro adjustment and control. They also emphasized on building a strong China which can compete with Big Powers, such as U.S.A. Nearly all of the nationalist think that ecological protection should take nation and country as standard because the international competition is cruel. Especially after president Bush refused to sign on “Kyoto Protocol”, their attitude is more radical. Though I disagree with their major view and oppose their position, but I have to acknowledge that the globalization and nationalism are contradictory in the term of ecological protection, at least in the view of short-term affect.

By the simple narration and analysis above, we can see that the mainstream of Chinese folk ideological trend is not ecological movement. The logic that the eco-crisis is the inevitable result of modernization, the eco-crisis can only be overcome after the abundant modernization, is overwhelming in china. So, the china ecological movement cause is in the marginal state in folk too.

But the ecological movement  exists tenaciously. The China ecological movement took shape in the 1980s of the 20^th century, finished the transition from environmentalism to ecological movement in 1990s. The quantity of advocates and practitioners of china ecological movement are small, but their will is strong, some of them regard the ecological movement as target of faith. The participant’s culture level is high, including scholars, writers, artists, engineers, etc. There are still few ordinary people to participate in it.

I’ll introduce the ecological movement cause in China in three levels:

1.The ecological movement as a practice—there are few but extremely firm deep ecologist in China. They observe the ecological state of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the desertification area in northwest of China on foot, trying to protect the ecosystem in china. Yang Xin, a famous environmentalist, has observed the headstream of Yangtze River several times. Having witnessed the deterioration of ecological condition of Yangtze River, he set up the first folk protection station in the headstream of Yangtze River. He has attracted many volunteers to work together with him. Now he is the symbol of Chinese environmentalist. Apart from individual environmentalist, there are some non-government environmental protection organizations. For example, Friend of Nature, a famous environment protection association, often organizes people to plant tree, protect bird, donate money for eco-protection, etc. There are dozens of environmental protection website at present, which publish various kind of ecological movement information, but it is a pity that the browsing amount is quite small. The central concerns of Chinese scholars is about the dispute between liberalism and nationalism. The deep ecologists are lonely in china, to take the ecological movement as a kind of practice is a few people’s life style.

2.The ecological movement as a culture—the ecological movement has already become a subculture in China, from eco-philosophy to eco-literature, the Chinese ecological movement culture has set up a system. Such books as Saving the Earth and the Future of Mankind (Song Zhuliang), Eco-ethics(Yu Mochang),ON Ecological Literature and Arts(Lu Shuyuan) have been published in recent years. The authors of those books are all intellectual. So, the intellectuals are not only the conscience of the society, but also the conscience of the universe (especially the conscience of eco-system). I am one of the originators of Chinese eco-culture. Since writing Manifesto of Chinese Ecologist in 1994, I devote myself to propagate ecological movement and published a large number of papers and prose, which aim at to surmount subjectivism. But those intellectuals often split on theory and practice of everyday life because of the context of consumerism and utilitarianism in China. Sometimes they propagate the ecological movement on one hand, maintain life of high consumption on the other hand. This is a meaningful phenomenon.

3,Ecological movement as a faith—It is still the choice of a few people to regard ecological movement as faith. The reason is quite complicated (traditional culture, the Great Culture Revolution, Marxism). But if ecology is not to be promoted to be a faith or quasi-faith, the cause of ecological movement itself could not be really realized. I myself try to promote ecological movement to be a belief system, have written an essay that Which X Should We Faith In? ,in which I advocate post-religion belief. In the view of mine, Man should believe in the totality of life. But my work in this dimension is far from completed. However, I must admit that the ecological movement as a faith is absent in china on the whole(so far as I know, Buddhism explains its doctrine in the view of ecological movement, but Buddhist in China is absolutely minority), it means the ecological movement cause in China remains to be promoted.

This is current situation of china ecological movement cause—it shows hope, but still has a long way to go, the deep ecologist including me can only lay hope on future.

Now I want to introduce the spiritual resource of China ecological movement cause briefly. Though China ecological movement cause is still in the initial stage, its spiritual resource is quite clear.

There are resource from native country, for example, the idea such as the Unity Between Man and Nature, the worshiping of nature in Lao Tzu’s philosophy, there are also resources from foreign culture, such as the influence of postmodern western theory and the holism of India. Among the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu is valued more and more. His logion “earth is the master of man, heaven is the master of earth, Tao is the master of heaven, nature is the master of Tao” is extremely close to the ecological movement principle, his famous saying “to be content with what one has is to be rich” is coincided with the western stable economics, his criticism on utilitarianism, technology, competition is very enlightened to modern ecologist. So, Lao Tzu is the pioneer of ecological movement cause. I hope western scholars can pay attention to Lao Tzu’s philosophy.

In the context of modernization of China, the eastern holism culture, including Indian philosophy and Chinese ancient philosophy are regarded as the symbol of backwards by most Chinese consciously or unconsciously. It is western culture exerts more influence on China ecological movement cause. The so called “West” is an ambiguous concept which signifies the countries which are advanced than China, such as Europe, U.S.A, Canada, sometimes including Japan. Western culture, such as the green philosophy, green ethics, green literature have exerted great influence on china ecological movement cause. Late Heidegger’s philosophy is listed in this series, though late  Heidegger’s philosophy is richer, deeper, wider than most of the eco-philosophy. The common characteristic of green culture is the surmounting of anthropocentrism. In the vision of green culture, man is not the center of the world, nor is it the end of everything; the world—the ecosystem—is a big family, man is only one kind of member in it; the fish, bird, tiger, trees are members of the family too, the relation between man and them is relation of different members in the family; therefore, man should not care about man only, but should care about the fish, bird, tiger, trees, care about all lives, care about the ecosystem. In order to reach this state, it is not enough to recommend environmental protection, man must transcend the utilitarianism attitude toward the world, turn himself from businessman to poet, existed poetically, and finally surmounting the modernity. As to modernity, scholar has given various definitions such as industrialization, urbanization, rationalization, but these definitions are not essentials. In my view, the core of modernity is subjectivity, namely, the dichotomy of subject and object. Man regards himself as subject, the nature as object. Subject is conqueror, he constructs a world, he is the center and end of this world, he regards the object as the tool and materials to realize his will as subject. This is the very reason of “the death of nature”. The origin of eco-crisis of contemporary time is modernity, the eco-crisis is the crisis of modernity, it can only overcome when modernity is surmounted. It is impossible to realize the ecological movement completely on the premise of keeping modernity. So, the real ecological movement culture belongs to postmodern culture. In the essential dimension, the ecological movement express a kind of appeal and request to turn from modernity to post-modernity, build a postmodern world. In short, the ecological movement is postmodernism, postmodernism must have the ecological dimension.

   It is time for me to declare my view of constructive postmodernism—it is among a few postmodernisms that are really postmodern. It is said that how many postmodernist there are, how many postmodernism there are. But most postmodernism don’t point to real post-modernity because these theory have no positive plan to build a new world which beyond the horizon of modernity, they has nothing more than negative dimension (for example, the theory of Lyotard—when the whole world is danger, he is indulging in the incommensurable language games and hope all the people addict themselves to the game, is this a responsible attitude? Lyotard is a philosopher of urban who knows nothing about nature and cares nothing for nature.). In contrast to those postmodernism, the constructive postmodernism is more suitable for situation of human in the times of globalization. Here I use the term “ constructive postmodernism” to refer  the theory of John B. Cobb and David Ray Griffin, etc. It inherits in Whitehead’s process philosophy which holds that the universe is in a flux, and man is the result of the flux, can only exist in the flux, so, he should be grateful to the universe. The ecosystem is the common home of man and the other lives. Just as the slavery in the human society must be abolished, the slavery between man and nature must be abolished too. The modernity has eliminated the slavery in society but intensify the slavery of man to nature(modern science and technology), it is the very reason that the modernity must be surmounted. Professor David Ray Griffin said: man should not regard various kinds of lives as the means for man to achieve their purpose, but regard them as their own ends. In order to realize this constructive holism, man must transcend modernity, especially, the anthropocentrism, building a postmodern world. I am willing to be a postmodernist in this sense. If I was asked to prospect the postmodern world, I would like to point out three characteristic: 1, postmodern politics and postmodern faith: to set up a centreless, one God world system;2, postmodern economy: move toward an economy type of gratefulness—reciprocation—balanced;3, postmodern culture: pursue the unity of individualism and ecological movement. These ideas are engendered under the inspiration of Heidegger, John B. Cobb, David Ray Griffin, so, I must express my deep gratitude  to them. You can feel the influence constructive postmodernism in my lecture.

   The influence of constructive postmodernism in China is mainly produced through the constructive postmodernism book series, such as The Re-enchantment of Science. Translated and introduced by Chinese scholars, such as Zhihe Wang, the constructive postmodernism is regarded as one of the most important schools of postmodernisms in China. Its influence is even greater than Whitehead’s philosophy, because the latter’s main works bas not been published in China. However, I want to point out a interesting fact honestly: the main part of American constructive postmodernism is postmodern theology, but most Chinese scholar are not interested in the theology in the system, perhaps it is due to the non-religion character of contemporary Chinese culture. Therefore, the constructive postmodern thinker should pay attention to the particularity of different cultures.

The postmodern world has not come yet at the whole level. The postmodernism is still a movement to begin. The imagination of postmodern world in the view of constructive postmodernism has the characteristic of utopia more or less inevitably. This is not its deficiency, but its honor. The crisis of modernity means the post-modernization must begin, only can the arrival of postmodernism save the human and the world. The fate of mankind and the fate of the whole ecosystem depend on whether the postmodern turn could succeed. So, the project of constructive postmodernism is sacred. This is the final conclusion of my speech.

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