Construction of environmental discourse concerning Europe in China

Abstract

The European Union (EU) has been seen as a key actor in constructing global environmental governance, and China has seen its rising role in global environmental politics. The Sino-EU environmental cooperation plays an important role in enabling global governance. And, while a wide range of studies on European environmental politics and the Western academic perspectives of observing China’s environmental governance have been identified widely, it remains very weak in understanding China’s construction of environmental discourse concerning Europe. This research employs the environmental discourse approach to observe the case of China and develop the research question: how have environmental discourses concerning Europe been constructed in China. The data for observing the discourse is collected from newspapers, academic articles, publications of environmental stakeholders, and governmental statements on environmental cooperation. The main finding is that the transition discourse and the liberal market discourse have been growing in the environmental discussion while the justice discourse has received weak attention in China. This research argues that the evolution of the environmental discourse has been determined by the types of sources, the non-state actors making the discourses, the positive image of European environmental affairs, and China’s supportive attitudes towards the Sino-EU cooperation.