Coalitions of the "Weak": Fighting Pollution at China’s Rural-Urban Interface

This project examines scale shifts and the formation of rural-urban environmental coalitions in China through a study of resistance against waste incineration. Many parts of rural China suffer from severe pollution (Lora-Wainwright 2013b), and the siting of waste incinerators in the countryside threatens to add to this burden (Balkan 2012). Since 2006 an anti-incinerator coalition—comprising sceptical experts, environmental NGO activists, academics, lawyers, and journalists—has formed in Beijing. NGO documents and our own pilot research reveal linkages between this urban coalition and rural communities opposed to incinerators. However, this remains unexplored by the literature. Activist coalitions promote diffusion of information and strategy between previously unconnected sites (Givan et al 2010). Through “frame bridging” and “brokerage,” they can have the important effect of “scaling-up” environmental campaigns from localised affairs to broader social movements (Rootes 2009; McAdam & Boudet 2012). This occurred in the United States, where networked anti-incinerator activism promoted more environmentally sustainable ways of treating waste and rejuvenated a green movement heavily oriented towards institutionalised lobbying (Szasz, 1994; Gottlieb 2002). Yet the processes through which localised environmental campaigns develop coalitions and form larger movements remain poorly understood (McAdam & Boudet 2012: 134). Our research would examine how Chinese rural dwellers—often assumed to be “isolated” from intermediary support from outside activists (Van Rooij 2010)—form coalitions with networked urban environmentalists, and how this affects campaign processes and outcomes. It addresses several questions: how do rural-urban anti-incinerator coalitions form, and how are tensions overcome? How do coalitions affect campaign tactics and outcomes, and participants’ perceptions of the issue? Why do Chinese urban environmental activists—previously assumed to shun linkages with pollution victims in favour of an approach “embedded in the state” (Ho 2007)—cooperate with rural antiincinerator campaigners? What do these cases reveal about the potential, and obstacles, for movement expansion in an authoritarian state? Our project would adopt a top-down and bottom-up approach in studying rural-urban anti-incinerator coalitions in China. It would examine anti-incinerator activism in three villages, in Hebei, Jiangsu, and Sichuan provinces. Following Mertha (2008), sites are selected based on outcomes, with one “success,” one “failure,” and one “mixed outcome.” We would conduct in-depth qualitative research in these three locations to better understand how rural dwellers fight pollution, and how they form linkages with wider networks. We would also interview participants in the Beijing-based anti-incinerator coalition to examine urban-rural networks from a top-down perspective.