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