Friends of Nature is China’s first environmental NGO, and their first environmental yearbook deals with the year 2005, the year of the Songhua River toxic spill crisis, the bird flu attacks, but also of a number of governmental and local initiatives to begin to tackle the increasing pressure on the environment. Here are the voices of experts and witnesses from the PRC itself describing and commenting upon the environment and protection measures in China in 2005, from the public perspective.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Yearbooks are co-publications of Brill and Social Sciences Academic Press (China).

Brill and Social Sciences Academic Press (SSAP) are happy to announce the first results of their newly established cooperation. The Chinese version of each of the resulting volumes will appear with SSAP, the English translation with Brill.

Over the past years the Chinese Social Sciences Academic Press, the publishing wing of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), has regularly published yearbooks in the Chinese language containing up-to-date essays and data on developments in important subjects including

- Environment

- Society

- Economy

- Legal Development

Published in China and written mainly by Chinese leading researchers from CASS, and scholars at the PRC's top universities and institutions, regularly also essays by scholars from the West are included, as well as discussions conducted in NGO's.

Through the English translations of the above selection of yearbooks, Brill will, from 2007 onwards, make available to the world-wide non-Chinese speaking academic community these approaches, facts and figures, so vital for understanding discussions in and with China.