Economic Development and Environmental Change in China

Catalog description

Can China strike a balance between economic development and environmental protection? This question, perhaps the most important question facing China (indeed the world) over the next few decades, pits economy and environment against one another. How did this adversarial relationship come about? Is it necessarily adversarial? Is it rooted in long-term trends in Chinese history, or in the most recent decades of double-digit economic growth? Are there solutions? Or are there better ways of asking the question? This course will look closely at the benefits, the consequences, and the costs of economic growth to society, ecology, and environment in China. The focus in on present dilemmas, examined through an historical perspective.