An Ecological History of Modern China by Stevan Harrell;

Author:Stevan Harrell;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)

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The Great Leap Forward thus had four major effects on city-scale social-ecological systems. First, it led to major changes in the physical, spatial structure of the cities, culminating in the cellular model that prevailed through the rest of the high socialist period and well into the Reform era. Second, it concentrated the environmental effects and injustices of industrial pollution even more locally than previously, as people lived right next to where they worked—and not necessarily upwind. Third, the rush to rapidly expand industry led to an increase in the ratio of pollution to output. Any environmental controls on large-scale polluting industries were neglected in the rush to expand. Many of the ill-advised, small-scale industrialization efforts, particularly the Great Smelting campaign, produced more pollution per unit of output in unfiltered coke ovens and inefficient furnaces than was produced by larger, more energy-efficient factories. Inferior grades of coal, containing too much sulfur to begin with, were washed improperly or not at all, leading to greater emissions of ash and gaseous pollutants. Worker safety, including protection from pollution, was neglected or honored in the breach. All of these increased the numerator of the pollution-to-output ratio, while the unusable nature of much of the product decreased the denominator. Fourth and finally, the relationship between city and countryside was changed; although agricultural failures of the Great Leap resulted in some capital investment in agriculture, the exploitative nature of the urban-rural relationship endured and probably worsened.

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