Mao's War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China

by Judith Shapiro

• ISBN13: 9780521781503
• ISBN10: 0521781507
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Judith Shapiro, in clear and compelling prose, relates the great, untold story of the devastating impact of Chinese politics on China's environment during the Mao years. Maoist China provides an example of extreme human interference in the natural world in an era in which human relationships were also unusually distorted. Under Mao, the traditional Chinese ideal of 'harmony between heaven and humans' was abrogated in favor of Mao's insistence that 'People Will Conquer Nature'. Mao and the Chinese Communist Party's 'war' to bend the physical world to human will often had disastrous consequences both for human beings and the natural environment. Mao's War Against Nature argues that the abuse of people and the abuse of nature are often linked. Shapiro's account, told in part through the voices of average Chinese citizens and officials who lived through and participated in some of the destructive campaigns, is both eye-opening and heartbreaking.

Table of Contents

Chinese Measurement Equivalents	x
Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(20)
Population, Dams, and Political Repression	21	(46)
A Story of Two Environmental Disasters and the Scientists Who Tried to Avert Them
Deforestation, Famine, and Utopian Urgency	67	(28)
How the Great Leap Forward Mobilized the Chinese People to Attack Nature
Grainfields in Lakes and Dogmatic Uniformity	95	(44)
How ``Learning from Dazhai'' Became an in Exercise in Excess
War Preparations and Forcible Relocations	139	(56)
How Factories Polluted the Mountains and Youths ``Opened'' the Frontiers
The Legacy	195	(22)
Notes	217	(36)
Bibliography	253	(16)
Index	269