Civil Society, Governance and Environmental Issues

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HISTORY OUTLINE OF NGOs’ MOVEMENT IN CHINA The development of proper environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) started during the mid-1990s and emerged steadily since then (Thompson and Lu, 2006); nevertheless, it has to be considered that the environmentalist movement was actually born in a post-industrial context dating back to the late ‘70s, mostly popular between élites, scientist and academic milieus (as the “Three Gorges Dam” protests indicate, cfr. Johnson, 2009). It should also be noted that one of Mao’s less known political features at the launch of the Cultural Revolution implied that “ […] if people living in nature want to be free, they will have to use natural sciences to understand nature, to overcome nature and to change nature; only then will they obtain freedom from nature” (Ho 2001, p. 895). Thus, every development in an environmentalist sense before the leadership passage was impossible. The first ENGO officially registered with the governement only in 1994, marking the “advent of a permissive policy environment” (Thompson and Lu 2006, p. 28), but most of all paving the way for a stronger participation of civil society in general. ENGOs were therefore pioneers for later grassroots NGOs which could also rely on international support, in such a way that advocacy and campaigning grew incredibly fast. Environmental governance is recently becoming a more popular topic among the netizens as well, contributing to informal support to the cause; it has been estimated that while the number of ENGOs registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs or its local bureaus (by the end of 2008), was 3,539 the total number of unregistered ones was over 2,000 (Xie 2009, p.3). The latter can only act through unofficial channels, and owe thus a great deal to internet users. ENGOs’ MOTIVES AND CRITICAL CONCERNS A big hurdle inherent to

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