China’s Environment and China’s Environment Journalists: A Study by Hugo de Burgh and Zeng Rong (review)

In recent years, the state of China’s environment has been receiving extensive media coverage, both within China and abroad. Chinese journalists are reporting on a wide variety of topics, including pollution incidents, new government policies, violations of environmental regulations, and many more.¹ It is worth noting that Chinese journalists are receiving international recognition for their reporting.² These stories create a better-informed public, which is now clamoring for more action. For example, in 2011 and 2012, public demonstrations across China resulted in the closure of existing industrial facilities and the suspension or cancelation of new projects.³

In June 2009, Caijing (财经, a financial periodical) and International Media Support (a nongovernmental organization that supports local media in more than fifty countries) cosponsored a seminar on environmental journalism in China. International Media Support commissioned the China Media Centre (at the University of Westminster, United Kingdom) to interview the seminar participants. The interviewees included journalists, environmental specialists with professional interests in journalism, and other Chinese media professionals. Two of the interviewers, Hugo de Burgh and Zeng Rong, compiled the findings into China’s Environment and China’s Environment Journalists: A Study.⁴ De Burgh is a professor at the University of Westminster and the director of the China Media Centre. Rong is a postdoctoral research fellow there.

This book is composed of six chapters, a bibliography, and a glossary. The first chapter summarizes the relationship between the 2009 seminar and this book. It also describes how political and market forces are influencing China’s media.

In chapter 2, de Burgh and Rong give a short history of China’s environmental governance. They discuss several contextual factors that influence environmental journalism in China. Among these are the decentralization of power to local governments, citizen complaints, nongovernmental organizations, and the requirements for information disclosure. The authors conclude with excerpts from two contrasting Western assessments of China’s efforts to protect the environment: one focuses on the progress that has been made and the other, on the continuing lack of progress.

The interviews yielded a wealth of findings (chap. 3). Respondents commented on how environmental reporting has changed (pp. 37–39). They gave examples of environmental cases that they investigated and revealed the strategies that they employ for getting their information (pp. 44–48). Two commonly mentioned obstacles to reporting were journalists’ lack of competence and a general failure to understand the significance of environmental issues (pp. 52–56). To overcome these obstacles, one interviewee advocated the recruitment of journalists with science degrees, while another argued for educating local government, enterprises, and citizens (pp. 56–57).

Chapter 4 summarizes twelve environmental cases that were mentioned by the respondents. These include a project to reverse environmental degradation in the South China Sea, the Three Gorges Dam, milk contaminated by melamine, blue-green algae in Lake Tai (Jiangsu Province), and other cases. Most include links to websites containing additional information.

In chapter 5, the authors offer their own recommendations to address the concerns expressed by the seminar participants. These include training courses for university students, journalists, editors, and decision makers. De Burgh and Rong also suggest that journalists should be provided with examples of environmental reporting from other parts of China and other countries.

The authors’ concluding thoughts are in the final chapter. As they see it, journalists “are acting, as they have done in China for some time in other areas of social life, as an arm of government in promoting environment awareness and calling for obedience to the new norms, yet as critics of the government when they reveal the failure of policies” (p. 84).

Numerous sources—including books, journal articles, news reports, and websites—are listed in the bibliography. The glossary provides the Chinese and English names of selected media outlets and government agencies.

Two changes would improve this book. First...