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Abstract
Chinese environmental groups have become increasingly active in the past few years and have begun to make an impact on environmental governance. The paper analyses the recent development of Chinese environmental civil society, the way it operates, and the challenges ahead, which include the need for environmental NGOs to improve their technical capacity, to strengthen further the collaboration between different organizations, and to strike a balance between maintaining domestic support and meeting international concerns. The biggest challenge ahead for environmental civil society is to develop the necessary skills to tackle the broader political, economic, and social issues that underlie environmental problems.
Acknowledgements
An early version of this paper appeared as a Chatham House Asia Programme briefing paper. Field research for this paper was carried out in China in May and June 2005 and November 2006. I would like to thank the individuals who granted me interviews. To protect their identities neither their names nor the locations of the interviews are given here, but I am very grateful to all my interviewees for openly sharing a great deal of invaluable information with me. I would also like to thank Pan Yinian for his research assistance.