Table of contentsIntroductionChina's environmental stateGlobal threat or world peace?ConclusionIntroductionAfter three decades of exceptional economic growth, China has become a global economic power. However, as the economy grows, China's environmental challenges also increase, leading to enormous socio-economic consequences for China and the rest of the world. The global financial crisis prompted China to create more domestic consumer demand and implement massive infrastructure construction. Despite China's numerous efforts to protect the environment and improve resource use efficiency, increasing environmental pollution and resource scarcity have become a serious bottleneck for sustainable development. Due to China's size, these and other challenges and opportunities have enormous implications for the world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe Environmental State of ChinaTraditional Chinese culture, known as Confucianism, pits humans against nature. This notion is articulated by the popular expression that “man must triumph over nature”. There is evidence of environmental governance dating back at least to the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Book of Rites that local officials were responsible for protecting their local rivers, mountains, forests, and animals. Confucian teachings also call for respect for nature, while other Chinese spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism and Taoism, advocate a harmonious relationship between man and nature. The father of the nation; Maoist policies have left three major marks on the current state of environmental governance in China. First, the development mindset remains highly influential, both among government officials and the general public, in shaping attitudes toward environmental protection. Only recently has environmental protection become a priority on China's political agenda. Second, political decentralization and the nomenklatura system continue to encourage fierce competition among local officials, which has contributed to rapid economic growth. Third, Maoist campaign-style governance is still prevalent in environmental management practices today. China's modern environmental state was born in the 1970s. In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment met in Stockholm, with China participating as a new member. In August 1973, China's State Council (Cabinet) convened the country's first national conference on environmental protection. As early as the 1970s, the central government recognized the pitfalls of the development trajectory followed by previously industrialized countries. The 1973 Decision's emphasis on ex ante pollution prevention, rather than ex post reduction, represented a radical shift in China's approach to environmental governance and demonstrated central leaders' awareness of the problems associated with “pollute first, control later” mode. Two main features marked the development of China's environmental status. The first was the rapid promulgation of laws, policies and regulations regarding environmental protection; and the second was the expansion of China's environmental protection bureaucracy. As mentionedPreviously, China's first national environmental protection law, officially titled the Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, was passed by the National People's Congress (NPC) in 1979. Among its many provisions, the law authorizes local governments to adopt their own laws, policies and regulations on environmental protection. Subsequently, dozens of state laws and hundreds of local regulations were adopted over the following decades. As of 2016, China had 20 national environmental laws adopted by the NPC, nearly 200 national environmental regulations issued by the State Council, and more than 1,000 local environmental regulations adopted by local people's congresses. In addition to powerful bureaucracies, state-owned enterprises also have considerable influence in the environmental policy-making process. Indeed, much of China's energy sector is still dominated by a handful of large companies. For example, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) together account for 72 percent of the country's annual crude oil production, 75 percent of the country's annual refined oil production, and nearly 90 percent of the country's annual crude oil production. percent of annual natural gas production. extraction. [endnoteRef:8] Thus, state-owned companies have often been able to use their outsized political influence to reshape energy regulations or simply ignore them. Market-based environmental governance: Since the late 1980s, there has been a gradual shift in the style of environmental regulatory control; the type characterized by technological mandates to the adoption of more market-oriented policy tools. When the environmental sector is governed by market mechanisms, the basic principle is the creation of economic incentives for specific policy actions. Examples include pricing pollution through Pigouvian taxes or cap-and-trade programs, as well as providing offsets for ecosystem maintenance. services. Over the past three decades, China has launched several waves of policy experimentation in an effort to reduce SO2 emissions using emissions trading schemes. The first phase of emissions trading development took place between 1990 and 1994, during which pilot trading programs were established in six countries. cities. Later, in the tenth period (2001-2005), inaugurated the 4+3+1 program by selecting four provinces, three cities and one enterprise to participate in a pilot SO2 emission trading program , most up-to-date assessment. China's SO2 trading programs. China's experiences with the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism, in which rich countries invest in low-carbon projects in developing countries to claim carbon credits. Under the leadership of the NDRC, China has participated in more CDM projects than all other developing countries combined. In the case of China's carbon markets, policy development has been extremely rapid. Carbon emissions trading was first mainstreamed into China's foreign policy in 2010. The following year, the NDRC approved seven pilot programs in five cities and two provinces, and in 2014, all programs had become operational. Finally, after less than two years of testing a pilot program, the central government announced its intention to implement a national systemcarbon emissions trading in 2017. In addition to adopting emissions trading schemes to combat pollution, China has implemented large-scale payments for ecosystem services. (PSE). Among these efforts, the Grain for Green program, also known as Conversion of Agricultural Land to Forest and Sloping Land, is the most notable example. protect the forests surrounding the sources of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. According to official statistics, by the end of 2013, more than 100 million farmers had participated in the program, with approximately 25.8 million hectares of cropland successfully converted to forest. At the 2013 meetings of the NPC and the National People's Political Consultative Conference, the State Council unveiled plans to reshuffle various ministries and streamline their responsibilities. In September 2016, the power to appoint EPB directors at the municipal level was transferred from municipal governments to provincial EPBs, although city “approval” was still required to confirm nominees. If all goes as planned, this new rule will make local EPB directors much more accountable to vertical oversight. Global threat or world peace? According to the notion of power structure transformation, when a state becomes richer and more powerful, it will inevitably seek greater regional and then global political influence, leading to a change in the power structure in the region and in the world. world. The change in the power structure brought about by the rise of a newly established regional and global power generally poses a long-term danger to the security of the region and even to the stability of the world. According to the power structure analysis, China poses a threat to the security of the East Asian region and the United States and its main ally in East Asia, Japan. Thus, Asia is likely to experience more international conflicts in the near future. For Lemke and Warner (1996), war is more likely when the power of an emerging and dissatisfied country becomes equal to that of a dominant state, the United States, in this area. case. Power parity then offers the opportunity to act for those determined to change the status quo. The phenomenon has been applied to China as a rising power seeking to change the status quo in the East Asian region. Furthermore, China's desire to change the international status quo can be explained by China's historical memory of its past greatness and the desire to regain its status as the Middle Kingdom; his determination to erase the painful legacy of a century of national humiliation; its desire to recreate the traditional Sino-centric world order as a means of regulating the world's political and economic structures; and his belief that China's external security in the past was ensured above all by a strong state. Furthermore, given the dramatic increase in its economic development, China has begun, since the 1970s, to modernize its armed forces, largely by importing advanced weapons from abroad. This has led many observers to assert that China will not only seek hegemony in East Asia, particularly its territorial claims over the South China Sea, but will also assert its influence in the global sphere , which will most likely lead the United States to counterbalance the situation. China's assertiveness and if this situation persists, a hegemonic war could be on the horizon. Although many researchers have expressed pessimistic views about the threat posed by the rise of.