Environmental Issues in East Asia Research Paper

When we say the ‘environmental problem,’ the central interest is of course on the natural environment. While human beings have, since ancient times, utilized the natural environment as a resource, the degree to which they exploit natural resources increased rapidly after the Industrial Revolution, during which they obtained the industrial technology through which to transform nature as they wished. The other side of the coin of this industrial technology, however, was to break the natural environment of unanticipated consequences. Thus, today human beings are confronted with the environmental problems such as pollution of the air, water, soil, and sea, destruction of the ecosystem of the plants and animals, ozone layer depletion, and global warming.

On the other hand, however, the social environment has always something to do with it. This is because it is the human social action of production and consumption that deteriorates the natural environment, unless it is caused by earthquake, volcanic eruption, or typhoon. In this sense the destruction of the natural environment is connected closely with the ways in which human social actions are organized by the social environment. The social environment is, sociologically speaking, of importance as the socializing agent that brings people to conform to environmental ethics. This means that the degree to which the natural environment is polluted is controllable through the ways of the working of the social environment.

2. The Beginning Of The Industrialization In East Asia

The history of the ‘environmental problem’ is not necessarily new, in the sense that even in the preindustrial age there was deforestation, land exhaustion, and urban spoilage. However, the development of modern industrialism brought a new stage of environmental problems from the pollution of land, water, and the air to car fumes, waste disposal, global warming, ozone depletion, and so on. The result is the recent issue of ‘sustainability.’

Industrialization was originated by the Westerner in the second half of the eighteenth century. Non-Western countries, more than 100 years later, began to industrialize through cultural diffusion from the West. The beginning of industrialization in the East Asian countries was toward the end of the nineteenth century. In East Asian countries, as the beginning of the industrialization was late, the beginning of the environmental problem was of course late, too. But once industrialization started, it advanced very rapidly, so that the destruction of environment came so intensively.

Among East Asian countries, Japan’s start to the industrialization was the earliest. Japan’s industrial revolution was between the 1890s and the economic boom after World War I (1914–18). While the Japanese economy of the 1920s was in depression, there was an economic recovery after the Manchurian War (1931–3). However, the defeat in World War II (1941–5) made the Japanese economy degenerate to the level before 1920, so that the Japan’s industrialization was interrupted between 1945 and 1955. It was the result of unprecedented high rate of economic growth period (1955–73), in which more than 10 percent in the yearly growth rate continued during 18 years, that Japan reached the economic level of the Western advanced countries in terms of per capita GNP. The other side of the coin, however, of this rapid economic growth was the peak in the unprecedented occurrence of pollution in this period.

The countries or the areas in East Asia that achieved the industrialization after Japan were Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea (which are known as the ‘Four Little Dragons’), as well as the advanced area of China (the coast area along the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, and the basin area along the River Yangtze-Jiang). Among them the most advanced is Singapore which was a British colony before the World War II and is now the most successful international city state consisting of mainly overseas Chinese. The second most advanced is Hong Kong, which has developed as an international financial center until 1997 as British colony, but is now a part of China. The third is Taiwan, which has achieved success in economic development through an export market strategy since the latter half of the 1970s. Korea, similar to Taiwan, has achieved economic success since the government began to take the development strategy through export market in the 1960s and the 1970s.

The economic development of the Four Little Dragons is important, although they are small countries, because the industrialization of the East Asia was once a ‘point’ (Japan) but now it spreads to a ‘surface’ by them. In this surface the three points (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) are Chinese in ethnicity, and it is important in that they effectively promoted the industrialization of the advanced area of mainland China. In the 1980s the surface including Japan, the Four Dragons, and China changed the image of the East Asia drastically from stagnation to development. However, from the point of view of the environmental problem, the other side of the development was the peak of the pollution.

3. Economic Development Of Japan And The Problem Of Environment

The first big industrial pollution in Japan was the contamination of rice fields by spill of the slag of copper mines into rivers. There were several such events, among which the biggest was the case of Ashio Copper Mine Co. Ltd. of Tochigi Prefecture beginning from 1885. Slag that spilled into Watarasegawa River in every flood polluted rice fields of the lower villages irrigated from the polluted river, so the victims were farmers whose rice fields became impossible to cultivate. Shozo Tanaka, a member of the Diet represented from the district, having decided to devote himself to the opposition movement of the victim farmers, not only interpellated government in the Diet, but also made a direct appeal to the Emperor Meiji by presenting a petition written by an anarchist Shusui Kotoku, but in vain.

Japan’s Industrial Revolution was centered on light industries of silk and cotton spinning, and was followed by heavy industries of steel and machines after World War I. All of them used coal as energy, so that the sky of Osaka and other industrial cities were covered by soot and smoke. As these were regarded as a symbol of economic prosperity, however, there was no recognition that they were harmful for residents’ living.

Between war defeat in 1945 and the beginning of high rate of economic growth in 1955 there were no environmental problems because Japanese industries had not recovered from the war damage.

At the starting point of the events of the industrial pollution after the war stood the case of Minamata disease of 1956 caused by methyl mercury included in the waste water of Chisso Co. Ltd. located in Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture. The Company threw the waste away into the Shiranuhi sea and polluted fish seriously, so the victims were fishermen who caught the polluted fish. The symptoms of the victims were terrible: paralyzed limbs, convulsed bodies, dribbling, sight and speech impediment, muddled senses, mental derangement; more than half died within 3 months. The cause was not known at the outset but was clarified gradually by the physicians of the medical department of Kumamoto University. Until 1968 the government did not acknowledge that the liquid waste of Chisso Co. Ltd. was the cause, as there was a difference of opinion between the Ministry of Trade and Industry, which took the side of the Company and the Ministry of Health and Welfare that took the side of the Kumamoto University physicians. Because of this delay it was in 1973, 17 years after the event, that some of the victim’s families won compensation by winning the case.

Following the Minamata case, pollution events occurred in many places of Japan during the high rate of economic growth period. In Niigata Prefecture, Niigata Minamata disease occurred in 1965 by the pollution of the Aganogawa River caused again by methyl mercury included in the waste water of Showa Denko Co. Ltd. The victims were fishermen again. In Toyama Prefecture, itai-itai disease occurred in 1955– 60, caused by cadmium pollution from Mitsui Metal Mine Co. Ltd. into Jinzugawa River. The victims were farmers whose rice fields were irrigated from the polluted river. In Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture, once a harbor city with beautiful coast, a large-scale petrochemical complex was built in the latter half of the 1950s. Yokkaichi asthma occurred there, beginning in 1960, caused by sulfur oxide emission into the air from the complex. In Tagonoura Coast, Shizuoka Prefecture, in which the beautiful Mt. Fuji scenery of the Tokaido Line has been well known since the ancient Manyo poem, the coast was polluted by waste fluid discharged from the many paper manufacturing factories into the sea. Polluted sediment accumulated at the coast, was reported by photos in newspapers, and provoked national indignation.

Though these many cases of industrial pollution intensively occurred in the high rate of economic growth period, public opinion that was formerly permissive to the behavior of business firms came to severely watch them. Neighborhood protest movement against industrial pollution came to be organized in many districts. Under these backgrounds of rising public opinion and protest movement, the Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control was enacted in 1967. In the so-called ‘Pollution Diet’ in 1970 this law was revised more rigorously and the 14 antipollution Laws were established at a stroke. In 1971 the Environment Agency started. Between 1969 and 1975 a series of environmental standards for sulfur oxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, water pollution, floating particles of dust, factory noise, airplane noise, and Shinkansen noise were settled.

Against the pollution for which industrial enterprises are responsible, these governmental antipollution measures under the background of public opinion and protest movement were very effective. After the latter half of the 1970s no enterprise discharged untreated wastewater or soot and smoke into rivers, sea, or air. This fact is also related to the change of the Japanese industrial structure into the ‘postindustrial’ stage, the border of which was again in 1975.

Thus, after 1975, the character of the environmental problem in Japan changed totally from the problem of pollution by factory to that of the ‘global environment’ such as the pollution caused by automobile gas and by family garbage for which all the residents in general who were once victims of the factory are responsible. The sort of targets with which the environmental problem must wrestle changed to, for example, saving energy and resources, separating and recycling garbage, regulating automobile gas, preventing global warming, preventing ozone layer depletion, stopping acid rain, and protecting nature.

Confronting these changes in environmental problem, the ways of the environmental administration as expressed in the 1967 Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control came to be changed. In 1993 the enacted Fundamental Law of Environment altered the new environmental policy. The direction of this policy change was basically from regulating pollution to making a society in which sustainable development is possible.

4. Economic Development Of China And The Problem Of Environment

The People’s Republic of China under the Mao Zedong regime (1949–76) pushed the Soviet Russian type of heavy industrialization until 1957, but after that the industrialization policy was discarded in adopting the People’s Commune from 1958 and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping took political power and the Cultural Revolution came to an end. Deng Xiaoping, succeeding Zhou Enlai’s policy of ‘four modernizations,’ promoted China’s industrialization, on the one hand, by bringing up many small-scale industrial firms in rural villages after the abolition of People’s Commune, and on the other hand, by introducing joint companies with Japanese and Western capitals by setting up in big cities of the ‘Economic Special Areas’ for that purpose.

As the economic development of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore progressed in this same period, Fujian as the root of Taiwanese, Guangdong as the root of Hong Kong people, and Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore were unified into the ‘Chinese People’s Economic Area’ beyond borders. The impact of this Chinese People’s Economic Area, being extended to the whole advanced area of mainland China (the coastal area along the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea including ‘Economic Special Areas,’ and the basin area along the River Yangtze-Jiang), had the effect of promoting the industrialization of the advanced area of China as a whole. The average figures of GDP growth rates in real terms of 8 years from 1990 to 1997 are: China 9.9 percent, Singapore 8.0 percent, Korea 7.4 percent, Taiwan 5.5 percent, and Hong Kong 4.5 percent (the data are partially deficit for Hong Kong and Taiwan). In sum, China and the Four Little Dragons are now the area of highest economic growth in East Asia.

However, from the point of view of environmental problem, the other side of the coin of the high rate of economic growth in this area is the big deterioration of the environment of the East Asia. Let us look at this problem on mainland China.

The first point is air pollution. As the industrial as well as domestic energy in China depends overwhelmingly on coal, the sky in Chinese cities, especially in winter, is, even in clear weather, always darkened by sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, soot, and smoke. When these melt into moisture, acid rain falls, and seasonal wind carries them to Korea and Japan.

The second point is deforestation. The River Yangtze-Jiang, the longest river in China, was once blue if not clear, but is now of yellow ocher color and there was a big flood in 1998, as the result of deforestation in the upper reaches. The Chinese government, though it announced that deforestation is prohibited, is unable to control offenders. This is the result of deforestation, based on the expanding difference between advanced and underdeveloped areas.

The third point is the problem of water shortage. In the Yellow River, the second longest river in China, water in the dry period disappears halfway, partly by the worsened condition in the upper reaches, but mainly by the increased use of water in the middle districts. Disappearance reaches 427 km and 107 days on the average in the 1990s. This brings big problems in agricultural and industrial production as well as in civil life in the middle and lower reaches.

The fourth point is the shortage of the facilities for the disposal of factory waste water and sewage. While the role of the many small industries in rural villages is important in the economic growth of contemporary China, they are mostly in primitive condition with no facilities of wastewater disposal. In cities, too, drainage and sewage disposal facilities are not enough.

The fifth point is the spread of desert. Mongols live in the dry area as nomadic tribes. Industrialization of China brought higher demand for wool, and the result an increase in breeding sheep. Because of the limited supply of grass in the dry area, the increasing number of sheep brought about the desert. Now it approaches the west side of Beijing.

In China, the environmental policy of the government started late after entering this period of high-rate economic development. The Vice Prime Minister Li Peng announced in 1983 for the first time that the environmental problem must be the basic policy goal. The Environment Protection Law was, although begun in 1979, enacted, after revision, in 1989. The administrative organization of the Bureau of Environment Protection started in 1974 as a section in the Ministry of the State.

In Korea, the environmental policy started earlier than in China. The Pollution Protection Law in Korea was enacted in 1965 and it was revised as the Environment Conservation Law in 1977. As the administrative organization, the Environment Agency started in 1980 and became the Ministry of Environment in 1994.

When the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development as well as ‘Agenda 21’ was adopted, China made ‘Agenda 21 of China: White Paper on Population, Environment and Development in the 21st century China’ and established the environmental standards in quantitative terms toward the sustainable development, such as the rate of diffusion of sewage disposal facilities in cities, the rate of reutilization of solid industrial waste, the rate of forest to total national land in area, and the rate of nature protection districts to total national land in area.

5. The Significance Of The Environmental Problem In East Asia

While many of the East Asian countries are now in a stage of high rate of economic growth in industrialization, there are big differences among them in terms of the level of per capita GNP in US Dollars in 1998: Japan 32,350, Singapore 30,170, Hong Kong 23,660, Taiwan 12,265, Korea 8,600, China 750. The figures for Southeast Asian countries are: Malaysia 3,670, Thailand 2,160, Philippine 1,050, Indonesia 640. We can say that Japan and the Four Little Dragons achieved the industrialization, but others are still at the level of developing countries. Unlike Western European countries, in which industrialization is already complete and economic levels are not very different, in Asia the many countries have different industrialization levels.

As was shown in the process of COP3 Kyoto Convention (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) in December 1997, there is opposition of interest between the advanced and the developing countries around the measures against environmental pollution, as the developing countries want to develop more rapidly. While this is also the case among the Asian countries, in East Asia, not only Japan and the Four Little Dragons, but also the advanced area of the mainland China have already achieved industrialization. In this sense East Asian countries, together with the Western countries, must take the responsibility for the global environmental problems with which now the entire world is confronted.

Bibliography:

1. Ando J, Fujita Y 1998 Ningen to Kankyo (Human Beings and Environment). Nisshin Shuppan, Tokyo
2. Chinese Publishing Company on Environmental Science 1990– 2001 Chugoku Kankyo Nenkan (Year Book on Environment). Chugoku Kankyo Kagaku Shuppansha, Peijing
3. Environment Agency 1972–2001 Kankyo Hakusho (White Paper on Environment). Kankyo-cho, Tokyo
4. Funahashi H, Furukawa A (eds.) 1999 Kankyo Shakaigaku Nyumon (Introduction to Environmental Sociology). Bunkashobo-Hakubunsha, Tokyo
5. Iijima N 1993 Kankyo Shakaigaku (Environmental Sociology). Yuhikaku, Tokyo
6. Iijima N et al. (eds.) 2001 Kankyo Shakaigaku no Shiten (Viewpoint of Environmental Sociology), Koza Kankyo Shakaigaku (Lecture Series: Environmental Sociology), Vol. 1. Yuhikaku, Tokyo
7. Kojima R (ed.) 2000 Kankyo: Seicho eno Seiyaku to naruka? (Environment: Is it a Restriction to the Growth?). Gendai Chugoku no Kozohendo (Structural Change of Contemporary China), Vol. 6. Tokyo University Press, Tokyo
8. Tominaga K 1990 Nihon no Kindaika to Shakai-Hendo (Modernization and Social Change in Japan). Kodan-sha, Tokyo
9. Tominaga K 1997 Kankyo to Joho no Shakaigaku (Sociology of Environment and Information). Nikkagiren Shuppansha, Tokyo