MODERN CHINA'S BARRIER TO SUSTAINABLE WATER: A GLOBALIZED PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

In modern China, environmental deterioration quickly transforms into one of the country's most severe problems. Despite pressures of modernization on water resources, reforms and policies unsuccessfully manage this crisis. The lack of genuinely productive actions towards a Chinese ecological civilization traces back to the tension between environmental protectionism and economic growth. The majority of literature on Chinese environmental policy does not consider the influence of globalizing forces on governing bodies. Thus, this research analyzes these gaps in Chinese environmental protection from globalization, a catalyst for China's lacking environmental infrastructure. Here, environmental science, history, policy, and globalization synthesize into a holistic perspective on Chinese water issues. The study finds that mainstream free-trade economic globalization is China's most significant barrier to sustainable water. Historical causations of China's opening-up, foreign environmental implications, and currently operational ineffective environmental protection policy illustrate this barrier. Although this research finds current practices of economic globalization to be ineffective in maintaining a sustainable world, David Boje offers his Mother Earth Economy as an alternative. Overall, the conclusions drawn about China's environmental degradation apply to global environmental degradation. The whole world would do well to be wary of the implications of unchecked globalization on a sustainable future.