Environmental Protection Policy and Experience in the U.S. and China's Western Regions

China is a multiethnic country with a vase territory, a land of diverse ecosystems. With the drive for industrialization in China and the implementation of a western grand development strategy in western regions, both governments and people face great challenges in environmental protection and sustainable use of biodiversity resources as a result of growing interaction between human activities and the natural environment. To meet the challenges, governments in these regions need to adopt a series of important policy measures not only to reduce industrial emissions but also to return farmland to forests and pasture to grasslands and to implement measures of ecological migration to reduce human activities in ecological conservation areas. In this regard, China must not only learn profound lessons from industrialized countries but also search for international cooperation. The United States provides some good comparative case studies on environmental protection, grassroots environmental management, and conservation policies in western regions. This book attempts to address key questions about Chinese and U.S. environmental policies by looking at the historical development of environmental protection and the current environmental policies in the western regions of the two countries. Book jacket.

Sujian Guo is professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Center for U.S.-China Policy Studies at San Francisco State University, with concurrent appointments as associate dean and distinguished professor at Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences at Fudan University, China. Joel J. Kassiola is dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and professor of political science at San Francisco State University. Zhang Jijiao is professor in the institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and founder and chair of the Commission on Enterprise Anthropology, China.