1 Introduction: Problems and Perspectives
Plan of the Book

2 China’s Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE
Natural Environment
Landforms
China’s Geographic Regions
Forests and Ecosystems
China’s Climate
Human Settlement and Pre-History
The Origins of Agriculture in China
Rice Environments in Central and South China
Malaria
The Yangzi River Valley
The Environment for Millet in North China
Nitrogen and Fertilizer
Summary
Pre-historic Environmental Change
The Formation of a Chinese Interaction Sphere, 4000-2000 BCE
Bronze-Age China: Technology and Environmental Change, 2000-1000 BCE
The Bronze-Age Shang State, 1500-1050 BCE
Anyang
Shang Social Organization
Food
Shang “Civilization” and “Barbarian” Others
Environmental Change 1500-1000 BCE
Energy Regime
Climate Change and the Fall of the Shang

3 States, Wars, and Farms: Environmental Change in Ancient and Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE-300 CE
States, War, and Environmental Change in Ancient China, ca. 1000-250 BCE
Nomadic Pastoralists of the Steppe
Other Non-Chinese Peoples.
The Zhou Conquest: Colonies and Forests, 1050-750 BCE
Wars, Warring States and the Creation of the First Empire, 750-200 BCE
Iron and Steel in Ancient China.
War and the Use of Natural Resources
Summary
Environmental Change in the Early Empire, 221 BCE-220 CE
Han Colonialism, the End of the Xiongnu Steppe Nomads, and the Beginnings of Desertification
Han Roads and the Opening of New Lands
Empire, Agriculture, and Deforestation
Water Control
The (Yellow) River
Cities and Eating
Imperial Hunting Parks
Summary
Ancient Ideas about Nature and the Environment
Confucius
Daoism
Legalism
Mencius
Resource Constraints and the Idea of “Nature.”
The Control of Nature
Epidemic Disease
The End of the Early Empire
Conclusion

4 Deforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the Middle Imperial Period, 300-1300 CE
North China: War, Depopulation, and the Environment, 300-600 CE
Environmental Change in the Yangzi River Valley
Wet-rice Cultivation
North and South Reunited in the Middle Empire: The Sui, Tang, and Song Dynasties, 589-1279 CE
War and Water in Reuniting China
The Grand Canal
Han Colonization of the South and Southeast
“South of the Mountians:” Lingnan
The Southeast Coast
Disease Regimes
Malaria
Epidemic Disease
New Technologies and Environmental Change
Landed Estates
Buddhist Monasteries
Tang-era Attitudes (and Actions) Toward Nature
China’s Medieval Industrial Revolution
Colonizing Sichuan and Categorizing Others
Organizational Context
Chinese Views of “Barbarians” and Others
The “Cooked” and the “Raw”
Animals
Landscapes and Water Control
North China
Yellow River Water “Control”
Environmental Decline on the North China Plain, 1048-1128
South China: The Making of the Pearl River Delta
Flood Control
Fields Captured from the Sea
The Built Environment: Cities and Waste
An Urban Exemplar: Tang Chang’an
Waste, Sustainability and Nutrient Cycles
Conclusion

5 Empire and Environment: China’s Borderlands, Islands, and Inner Peripheries in Late Imperial China, 1300-1800 CE
A New Historical and Institutional Context
Population Size and Distribution
Markets
Climatic Changes
Frontiers and Borderlands
The Southwest
The Ordos Desert and the Great Wall
The Seventeenth-Century Crisis
The Great Hunt in the Northeast
China Marches West
Islands and Their Ecological Transformations
Hainan Island
The Island of Taiwan
Changes in Land Cover, Land Use, and Land Ownership
Exploitation of Inner Peripheries
Highland Specialists: the Hakka and the “Shack People.”
The Central Yangzi Region—Hunan and Hubei Provinces
The Lower Yangzi Highlands
The Ecological Limits of Empire
The Han Chinese and “Zomia”
Debates over Natural Resource Use (and Abuse)
Conclusion: Population, Markets, the State, and the Environment

6 Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800-1949
Chinese Consumption and Its Ecological Shadows
The Pacific Islands and Sandalwood
Siberia and furs
The American West Coast: Sea Otter and Beaver Pelts
India and Opium
Opium and the Global Bubonic Plague Epidemic
Opium and War
Environmental Degradation and Ecological Crisis
Northwest China
The Huai River Valley
The Yellow River and Grand Canal Region
The North China Plain
Yangzi River Valley
Patterns of Flooding in Chinese History
South China
West China
Tibetan/Qinghai High Mountain Plateau
Agricultural Sustainability
The Mulberry Tree and Fish Pond combination
Resource Constraints, Environmental Management, and Social Conflict
Forests as Food Reservoirs
Into the Twentieth Century
ENSO Droughts and Chinese Famines
North China Famines and Migration to Manchuria and Inner Mongolia
Fujian Forests and Forestry
Fisheries
War’s Environmental Catastrophes
China’s Forests ca. 1949
Conclusion

7 Controlling Nature in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-Present
Socialist Industrialization and Subduing Nature
Socialist Industrialization and Its Material Constraints
Depleted Soils
Foreign Opposition to Chinese Socialism
A Big and Growing Population (Is Good)
Shortages of Chemical Fertilizer
Chinese Communist Ideas about Nature
The Idea to Control Nature
Soviet Lysenkoism
Post-Mao Reform Era, 1978-present
Breaks with Maoism
Chemical Fertilizer Plants
Population Control
Changes to Forests and Land Use
China’s Official Forest-Cover Statistics
Forest Ownership Regimes
Collective Ownership
The Responsibility System of “Private” Ownership
State-Owned Forests
Deforestation during the PRC: “The Three Great Cuttings” Plus One
Great Cutting No. 1--The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60
Great Cutting No. 2--The Cultural Revolution, 1965-75
Great Cutting No. 3—Deng’s Reform Era, 1978-present
Market-driven Deforestation, 1992-98: The Last Great Cutting?
Grasslands and Desertification
Summary
State Nature Preserves and the Protection of Biodiversity
Nature Reserves
Recent Afforestation Projects
Wildlife, Consumption, and Epidemic Disease
“Controlling” Water
“Harness the Huai!”
Dam the Yellow River
Environmental Consequences of Dam Building
The Huai River Runs Black
Deep Drilling on the North China Plain
The South-to-North Water Transfer Project
The Three Gorges Dam
Historic Dujiangyan
The Three Parallel Rivers Region of Yunnan
“Develop the [Arid] West:” The Struggle to Dominate Nature Continues
The Conquest of Malaria
Polluting the Atmosphere
Powering the Economic Surge—Mostly with Coal
Auto-Nation China
China and Global Climate Change
Tibet, Glaciers, and Desertification
Environmental Protests, Consciousness, Activism and Movements
Lake Tai and Crusading Villager Wu Lihong
For Clean Water, Peasants Protest a Fertilizer Factory in Gansu
A Large-scale “Environmental Mass Incident”
State Responses to Environmental Problems
Green NGOs
Environmentalism and Democracy
Return to the “Angry” River
Can China Go Green?
Toward a “Harmonious Relationship with Nature”?
Conclusion

8 Conclusion: China and Its Environment in World Historical Perspective
Main Themes in China’s Environmental History
Changes in Land Use and Land Cover
Climate Change
Water Control
Deforestation
Colonization
The Simplification of Ecosystems
The Sustainability of Agriculture
The Problem of 1949: 3,000 Years vs. 30
China’s Ecological Resilience
The Driving Forces of China’s Environmental Change
Agriculture and the Chinese State
Markets and Commerce
Technological Change
Cultural Ideas and Practices
Population Size and Dynamics
China’s Environmental History in World Historical Context
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