Mao's War Against Nature

"Yes, she does, and have a look at Mark Elvin’s The Retreat of the Elephants. The environmental history of China is a very interesting one, and there is this mythology that Chinese peasants are somehow in tune with nature. But if you read Elvin you realise that in China there has actually been 2,000 years of unsustainable development and environmental degradation. It essentially comes from the model of a highly centralised state and its need to accumulate surplus wealth – and certainly under the old imperial system this was produced by the peasants. In fact, it was also the surpluses produced by the peasants that were used for a rapid industrialisation under Mao. And Mao’s of course was a particularly catastrophic period, both for the people and for the environment."