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This paper outlines how the evolution of China's policy and study of the environment are reflected in the scholarly literature, paying special attention to the impact of the country's environmental developments on international relations. In particular, it examines accounts of how China has moved from an isolated national scientific and environmental control infrastructure into the centre of international environmental debates as its society has opened and the geographical scale of ecological problems has expanded. The paper also identifies the continuing inhibitors to China's ability to control environmental degradation - including lack of transparency, elite manipulation, and bureaucratic weaknesses - despite the opening of China's system to limited participation of civil society in its environmental debates. (JCCA/GIGA)

This paper outlines how the evolution of China's policy and study of the environment are reflected in the scholarly literature, paying special attention to the impact of the country's environmental developments on international relations. In particular, it examines accounts of how China has moved from an isolated national scientific and environmental control infrastructure into the centre of international environmental debates as its society has opened and the geographical scale of ecological problems has expanded. The paper also identifies the continuing inhibitors to China's ability to control environmental degradation – including lack of transparency, elite manipulation, and bureaucratic weaknesses – despite the opening of China's system to limited participation of civil society in its environmental debates.

I feel honoured and privileged to participate in this ceremony celebrating The China Quarterly's 50th year. Throughout the years the journal has remained the core source for retrospective information on modern China. It is the journal staff, the editorial board, the readership, and the writers who submit papers that have kept the journal at the top of the field. Over the years this tradition forged by those who went before me, has shaped and greatly facilitated what an editor can do with the journal. It seems that most editors have found it wise to build upon what was already there while attempting to expand coverage and encouraging work in new or somewhat neglected areas, and I was no exception. Since I am the first editor who was not involved in The China Quarterly's 35th anniversary symposium, although I was present at that event, I will concentrate a bit more on details of my editorship.

Mark Elvin's books often deal with big ideas over large swathes of Chinese history and this book is no exception. The Retreat of the Elephants attempts to describe three millennia of environmental change and environmental ideas in China and to produce conclusions about the nature of Chinese environmental thought as well as experience. It is a masterful tour de force. As such, there is something of interest for everybody. The book is divided into three sections: the first sets the scene and looks at some general cases of degradation over time; the second section concentrates on case studies; and the final section provides textual analysis to elucidate changes in the Chinese view of their environment.The book begins with a simple geography and history lesson. This is helpful for the non-specialist but provides an overly simple and unusual regionalization. Then again, this approach, accompanied with a style that often translates lesser place names into literal translations, does help to open access to the book for a wider audience. Later in the book, however, there is a tendency to digress about Latin names of plants and stories of the supernatural, with wonderful esoteric translations of Chinese poetry and texts. Elvin's translations use words that would require most of us to thumb through a very thick English dictionary although Elvin kindly introduces these Scottish, Welsh and old English terms to us and provides good explanations on the stories behind many of the Chinese textual allusions. These are delightful and help to clarify the points being made. Still, with such almost overwhelming detail of textual analysis later in the book, it is not completely clear for whom the book is written.

This book is a collection of 14 articles from a workshop held in Hong Kong in May 2000. While the greatest number of papers comes from urban geographers, there are a smattering of chapters by economists, sociologists, political scientists and physical geographers. The editors have grouped the papers according to the three topics stated in the title with a good numerical balance among them. Three of the contributions are the opening addresses, a keynote speech, and a summation paper.In many ways, the summation chapter by Alvin So functions as a good overview of most of the contributions and there is little need to again go over the ground thus covered. Even a reading of this summation reveals the key problem of the book: it is still a series of conference proceeding papers rather than a fully integrated volume. As evidence of that point, So's summation makes no reference to the two entries by physical geographers that fall into the resource management section of the book. Both of these very thorough reports deal with vegetation in Hong Kong. Neither, however, makes any contribution to our understanding of resource management of the Zhu (Pearl) River Delta as a whole. So also makes no reference to the third paper in this section on a comparison of waste management between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Thus one whole section of the book is ignored in the summation, perhaps because So is a sociologist but also because none of those papers addresses issues of the Delta as a whole.