Upstream - [TEASER] China Pt. 5: Towards an Ecological Civilization w/ Tings Chak

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

This is a free preview of the episode " China Pt. 5: A Socialist Approach to Ecological Development w/ Tings Chak". You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. One of the primary challenges facing Global South countries in the 21st century is the question of sustainable and just development—how do you raise living standards and eliminate poverty, what some refer to as the process of industrialization, without going down the same ecologically destructive and often deadly path that Western capitalist countries went down—the path of slavery, genocide, colonization, and now, a form of neocolonialism that is essentially colonialism in all but name. How can you compete in a global capitalist economy against countries that have no qualms about ethnically cleansing an entire people just so that they can build a “riviera of the Middle East”? Well, this is a massive question that cannot be answered in a single episode, but we can begin to chip away at it and uncover some lessons and explore some evidence-based analyses that can help us to at least understand the alternative approaches that at least some Global South countries are experimenting with—because, despite what the monsters in power want us to think—there are alternatives to capitalism.   In this conversation, we’ve brought on Tings Chak to talk about China’s attempts to balance ecological and human development through the lens of a specific environmental project. Tings Chak is the Art Director and Asia Coordinator at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Editor of Wenhua Zongheng. She is the co-author of the recent piece “Reviving Erhai Lake: A Socialist Approach to Balancing Human and Ecological Development” published in Tricontinental. In this conversation, we talk about Erhai Lake—which is the site of a restoration and cleanup project that China has been working on for quite some time now. A decade ago, Erhai Lake was a microcosm of how China’s rapid economic development led to ecological devastation. Today, it’s an example of quite the opposite—how China aims to move towards its own stated goal of creating an ecological civilization that represents a harmonious balance between ecological and human development.  How and why did the Communist Party of China initiate a massive poverty reduction and ecological restoration project across the country, and how does Erhai Lake fit into it? What can be learned from this project by other Global South countries looking for alternatives to the capitalist model of development? And why should we be exploring these questions in the first place? This is just some of what we cover in this conversation between Robert and Tings Chak. Artwork: Tricontinental Further resources: Reviving Erhai Lake: A Socialist Approach to Balancing Human and Ecological Development, by Xiong Jie and Tings Chak  Wenhua Zongheng China and CoronaShock Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China  Chinese-Style Modernization: Revolution and the Worker-Peasant Alliance, by Lu Xinyu Without Culture, Freedom Is Impossible: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter (2022) Culture as a Weapon of Struggle: The Medu Art Ensemble and Southern African Liberation Related episodes: (Chinese) Socialism vs (U.S.) Capitalism Listen to our ongoing series on China Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and provide most of our content for free so we can continue to offer political education media to the public and help to build our movement. Thank you comrades, We hope you enjoy this conversation. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On a broader conceptual level, I think for global south countries, there is this hunger to or a need to think about what is a possible development path, what is a possible modernization path that isn't the kind of western modernization model that has been very much imposed on to us. I mean we are not going to go around as global

south countries to colonize and plunder and exploit the lands and labor of many other countries which is what helped develop the advanced capitalist societies up until now. So that option isn't available, it's not an option. So before we think about the environmental question is how do we develop? What is a possible way? I think this is one of the things the big challenges that is being faced in China is I think trying to confront in some ways. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you.

I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. One of the primary challenges facing global South countries in the 21st century is the question of sustainable and just development. How do you raise living standards and eliminate poverty, what some refer to as the process of industrialization, without going down the same ecologically destructive and often deadly path that the Western capitalist countries went down. The path of slavery, genocide, colonization, and now a form of neocolonialism that is essentially colonialism

in all but name. How can you compete in a global capitalist economy against countries that have no qualms about ethnically cleansing an entire people just so they can build a quote, Riviera of the Middle East? Well, this is a massive question that cannot be answered in a single episode, but we can begin to chip away at it and uncover some lessons and explore some evidence-based analyses that can help us at least understand the alternative approaches that at least some global south countries are experimenting with. Because despite what the monsters in power want us to think, there are

alternatives to capitalism. In this conversation we've brought on Ting's Chaq to talk about China's attempts to balance ecological and human development through the lens of a specific environmental project. Ting's Chaq is the art director and Asia coordinator at Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research and editor of Wenhua Zhongheng. She is also the co-author of the recent piece Reviving Arhai Lake, a socialist approach to balancing human and ecological development, published in Tri-Continental. In this conversation, we talk about Arhai Lake, which is the site of a restoration and cleanup project that China has been working on for quite some time now. A decade ago, Arhai Lake was a microcosm of how China's rapid economic development led

to ecological devastation. Today it's an example of quite the opposite, how China aims to move towards its own stated goal of creating an ecological civilization that represents a harmonious balance between ecological and human development. How and why did the Communist Party of China initiate a massive poverty reduction and ecological restoration project across the country? And how does Arhai Lake fit into it? What can be learned from this project by other global south countries looking for alternatives to the capitalist model of development? And why should we be

exploring these questions in the first place? This is just some of what we cover in this conversation between Robert and Ting's check. All right, Tings, it is a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much, Robert. It's a pleasure to be here. So I'm wondering just to start if you could introduce yourself for our listeners and maybe just talk a little bit about the work that you do. Yeah, sure. My name is Tingz.

I'm based in Beijing, where I am currently having a couple of different tasks in the Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research, which is an institute that began in 2018 with the perspective of really uplifting and producing knowledge from the perspective of grassroots political organizations and movements, largely in the global south, focused on Latin America, Africa, and Asia. And at the Tri-Continental, my main two tasks are helping to coordinate some of the work that we're doing in Tri-Continental Asia, as well as being the art director. So overseeing the cultural and artistic production and research, especially into histories of national liberation

and socialist struggles from the third world. And also here right now, I'm doing my PhD at Tsinghua University. And so yeah, that's a little bit about me. Thank you for that. And so you're an editor of the international edition of Wenhua Zonghang. And some of the people listening right now might recognize that name from our episode with Vijay Prashad a couple episodes back, he had mentioned it and talked a little bit about it. But I'm wondering if you can maybe just also talk a little bit more about the journal and what kind of work you publish and the kind of work that you do with the journal more broadly.

Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that we're seeing, especially in the last few years, is that there's a huge lack of access to the discussions, debates that are happening inside China. A lot of the people who are commenting on China or the China watchers mostly come from the West and there seems to be a gap perhaps because of language or otherwise and it creates a kind of assumption that in China, a country of 1.4 billion people, there aren't you know debates and divergences that you know 1.4 billion people all think alike and

just follow the line of President Xi Jinping. So we thought it would be really interesting to partner with the Chinese version of this journal 可文化中行, which really began in 2008, the Chinese version, to stimulate a debate across the broad left. And so what we started to do two years ago from Tri-Continental is to partner with them to translate select articles that we think are of particular relevance to international audiences, specifically those from the Global South, and put them into dialogue with each other. So we've published on issues such as after the, you know, the war in Ukraine, what is this emerging new international world order? We're seeing how do Chinese scholars and thinkers view

this to understanding processes of Chinese development, the ongoing project of socialist construction and socialist modernization, to the latest issue that's looking at China's ecological transition, which we'll speak more about. And so I think one thing that's really important about this journal, I'll invite all your listeners to check it out because it's available online for free in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, is that we need more information about China so we can have more informed discussions. Whether or not you agree with the political system

or its direction, it's important to have information. More and more so because we're living in this, you know, this new Cold War that is every day increasing and escalating, but where's the information to get an accurate assessment about what is happening inside China from Chinese voices? Awesome, yeah, thank you so much. And I would definitely recommend everybody go and check that out at Tri-Continental.

And all right, well, yeah, you had alluded to it. And yeah, we're gonna be spending the bulk of our time together talking about the sort of ecological transition and ecological issues in China. And we're going to be focusing on Erhai Lake. And that's a very specific sort of example. And then we'll broaden out a little bit of that from that and take some lessons and that kind of thing. But I want to, I want to ask before we get into the lake and what's been happening there, can we explore why we should talk about this topic and particularly why now? Yeah, I think that's a important question to start us off, especially from the

editorial team of why we decided to approach this topic. I think there's a couple of things. The first is the world is confronting a climate catastrophe and we know that the question of the environment knows no borders and so this is something that to study China's lessons including you know many of the contradictions and many of the difficulties but also the path to what China is imagining for what could be and how to address the climate question, the environmental question. And you know, I live here in Beijing and I think many of your listeners might remember about 10 years ago, many of the headlines that flooded, especially the Western mainstream media, is around the pollution that was characterized by Beijing.

You had all these images of you know children wearing like face masks or gas masks almost you know walking on the streets. It was nicknamed the airpocalypse because of the pollution crisis that had happened here. And we had all these images you know these like gray tinted smog filled Beijing skylines. And I think that was part of the narrative at the time right? China's economic miracle, the so-called economic miracle came at a huge environmental cost. This was sort of the ugly side to the industrial growth due to perhaps lax environmental laws. And

that there was a kind of understanding that this is an inevitable environmental cost or human cost as well, of course, because the environment affects human beings To become the factory of the world The thing is I think many people still see China that way still are stuck with that image And I think living here we see something much more dynamic We see a government really trying to address some of the hardest questions that are facing humanity And so I think in that sense we wanted to publish this issue, to look at a bit of the transformations, discussions that are happening in China on this,

and try to kind of update our analysis perhaps, you know, at least open a discussion, but not also hiding some of the, yes, in fact, ugly sides and contradictions that came out from this last three, four decades of high economic growth. And what are the lessons, you know, and what's the next path forward? That's what we're calling it. China's ecological transition is very much in a phase of recognizing this period that we have just passed. And then what is the next stage we're entering? And so we kind of divided the issue into a few topics.

One of them that we'll talk more about is the lake that you mentioned already, and so it's a process of how do you first step restore the areas that have been damaged, whether it's the desertification to the lakes, the waters to other areas that have really taken the brunt of the hit during this period. Then also how do you look at this transition towards a new ecological model, whether it's investments in technologies around renewable energies, which also come with their own questions, as well as investing in different practices and different governance models that are based in a scientific understanding of the environment of the climate question, amongst other things. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. So with that context, let's move into the piece itself.

So I really enjoyed it, by the way. I thought it was a really, really great read and really fascinating. I learned a lot both about the very, you know, micro context of the lake, but then I really appreciated how you broadened it out with your co-author and tied it to all of these huge questions that you kind of were just talking about as well. So the piece is Reviving Erhai Lake, a socialist approach to balancing human and ecological development. And there is a lot in that title that already kind of gives you a sense of where you're

sort of heading with this. And so, yeah, maybe just start with setting up the scene a little bit for us. Maybe you can just tell us about Lake Erhai. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe I'll just tell you where we are in China, first of all. Erhai Lake is in Dalai Prefecture in Yunnan Province. So we don't have a map, but I'll try to explain it is Yunnan Province is in the southwest corner of China.

It borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Shares a lot culturally, historically as well. And so the Dali Prefecture where this lake is has a very long history. You know, China has 5,000 year histories, but this place was also a capital of the ancient Nanzhou and Dali kingdoms. And what's interesting of this place till today, it's one of the country's most ethnically diverse areas. In China, we have over 50 different ethnic minorities that have sort of their own national rights etc but vast majority of people of the Han group which I belong to but in this particular region 52% of the local residents

actually come from diverse ethnic minority groups so that's quite unique in China and very unique especially around the southwest region of China the main group there is the Bai people. The other aspects I think important to know is that it was also historically one of the poor and underdeveloped regions and mountainous and it was last to see some of the economic growth benefits of the economic growth we saw in the other regions mostly focused on the east. And so Arhai lake is really let's say the lifeblood of that region. It's the seventh largest freshwater lake in China. And as a part of what we saw in the recent decades, and we can go into a bit more, it really became a symbol of just the pollution and the environmental costs that I had mentioned. And so by the time it was about 10 years ago, it really had turned into a very infested, algae infested pond that was

pretty much unsuitable for human contact. A lot of the biodiversity had been lost, it had threatened the livelihoods of local people. And so we were looking at how is it that, you know, in a few short years after that, when I actually arrived there two years ago, it was a complete different reality. So it's important for us to study this as the example of how China approaches a difficult environmental question. And so yeah, you mentioned that you first arrived there two years ago. What brought you out there? Like what kind of put this, you mentioned it was sort of well known, right? As being an example of maybe some environmental degradation. But yeah, I'm just curious, maybe if you could

talk a little bit more about what brought Lake Urhai onto your radar and what led you to really wanting to tell this story. Yeah, absolutely. So you had mentioned my co-author, Xiong Jie, he's also a researcher at the Tri-Continental. And we co-wrote this together. But it's also part of a process that we've been doing at Tri-Continental, which is to try to study some of the processes and transformations happening in China. And we've actually launched several studies, longer studies than this article.

For example, when the COVID outbreak began, there was a lot of misinformation, fake news that was being spread. So we went and did a study, deep study, deep dive into actually what was the government response, particularly in the first couple of months. We launched that study called Corona Shock in China. A year later I had a chance to go to Guizhou province, which is also in the southwest of China, to look at how China achieved this really historic mission, which is the eradication of extreme

poverty in the countryside. So we had a chance to go and speak with local, speak with party cadres, speak with local peasants, women, youth, etc. to understand a little bit about the processes of this really, really incredible campaign. And so going to Arhai was also another driven by this motivation to try to study more deeply these processes that are happening and of course this from an environmental angle. We're also working on a couple of more hopefully that'll come out in this year or the next. One is a study on Rongjiang County which is looking at the rural revitalization processes. For example we know that eradication of extreme poverty is a huge victory for the working class really but that's not the end goal it's just a step in thinking about what is the future

of the countryside. We're looking at another thing which is around a very important theme now, the question of digital sovereignty. How is China actually able to develop sovereign, independent, and robust digital infrastructures, especially in a time where we're seeing that get increasingly weaponized? Anyway, so I just wanted to give the context that this is part of a series of things that we're trying to study and understand the diverse aspects of China's very complicated and very interesting development. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with Ting's check. You can listen to the full episode by becoming an Upstream Podcast Patreon subscriber.

As a Patreon subscriber, you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You will also be helping keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. Thank you.