Brokering Environment and Health in China: issue entrepreneurs of the public sphere

Abstract

This article identifies four types of issue entrepreneurs in the creation of public issues about the environment and health in China. They are media professionals, environmental and health NGOs, villagers, and netizens. Because of the different resources of issue entrepreneurs and the constraints of China's political context, politically safe and innocuous issues and issues of concern to the urban population are more likely to enter the public sphere. Contentious issues linked to the interests of powerful business and political actors may become publicized under extraordinary circumstances such as emergencies, disasters, or epidemics, suggesting that external shocks may have a galvanizing effect. Some environment-related health issues, such as pollution-related cancer, are high-stake issues. They often affect the most disadvantaged segments of the Chinese population, yet despite their gravity, their chances of entering the public sphere are small.

Notes

^*Guobin Yang is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University. He thanks Jennifer Holdaway, Arthur Mol, and participants at the SSRC workshop on Environment and Health in China at the University of Hong Kong in April 2008 for offering constructive comments. Part of this paper was written while the author was a visiting fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore.

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^54. The middle class in urban China is not exactly the same as the middle class in Western industrialized societies. Chinese and Western scholars have both emphasized that this new middle class is primarily made up of salaried professionals. See Luigi Tomba, ‘Creating an urban middle class: social engineering in Beijing’, The China Journal no. 51, (2004), pp. 1–26.

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^57. For an introduction to Huo and his work and organization, see http://www.greengo.cn/company.php?comid = 21 (accessed 30 August 2008).

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