Sullivan Lawrence N., Liu-Sullivan Nancy. Historical dictianry of Chinese environment

Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. — 339 p. — (Historical dictionaries of Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East).The situation of China’s environment is of importance to not only the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but also the world as a whole, given the country’s huge population, massive industrial production and creation of waste, and economic ramifications abroad through the import of natural re- sources and export of finished products. But it is not easy to explain, first, because China has gone through different periods—almost total disregard for the environment during the rule of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping (1949–1992), and increasing and impressive efforts to save what remains of it, resolve old problems, and create a better environment since the 1990s. The other problem is that what is said, even by the government and its leaders, and embodied in national laws and regulations, is not always done. Thus, it is essential to follow the events on the ground, where there is increasing aware- ness among the people and the emergence of environmental nongovernmen- tal organizations (ENGOs). That is the double task of Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Environment, carried out with numerous entries on such topics as the ecologically backward Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), production of garbage, radioactive waste, deforestation, desertification, and climate change, as well as ecological cities and villages and environmental aware- ness, often having two components—what is said and what is done, although certainly much more is being done now than before.Given the remarkable reversal on ecological matters, the chronology is a good place to start, showing the frequent backward steps of the earlier “communist” regimes and the increasingly positive steps of subsequent “communist” regimes, from presidents Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, the reference to communism again showing just how important it is to look beyond the terminology used. This crucial aspect becomes even more evident in the insightful introduction, giving some hope for a better trajectory into the future. The introduction does an excellent job of summing up the situation and providing a good basis for what follows. The dictionary provides entries on the various policies adopted, the people who implemented them—usually within the government but increasingly in the general population and sometimes even at the grassroots level—and the countless policies and programs that have been adopted and sometimes implemented and which bodies are responsible for their implementation. Even this large volume cannot cover all the ground, and further information can be found in the appendixes and bibliography.This volume was written by two authors already familiar to readers of this series, Lawrence R. Sullivan and Nancy Liu-Sullivan. Dr. Lawrence Sullivan is professor emeritus of political science at Adelphi University and research associate at the East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Dr. Liu-Sullivan is a lecturer in the Department of Biology, College of Staten Island, and has conducted cancer research at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Both have previously written about the ecology of China, namely in their translation of China’s Water Crisis, by Ma Jun, and in several other historical dictionaries, as well as in articles and papers, Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Econo- my (2018), and Historical Dictionary of Chinese Foreign Affairs (2018), for Dr. Sullivan, and Historical Dictionary of Science and Technology in Mod- ern China (2015), for Dr. Liu-Sullivan. This latest volume, by two people who know the subject and the country well, nicely rounds out our subcircle of books on science and technology in the People’s Republic of China.