Book Review

Asia

In this readable volume, Judith Shapiro revisits the well-trodden terrain of Mao-era China to highlight the political causes of environmental damages of that era. Whereas others such as Vaclav Smil have provided excellent overviews of Mao-era environmental issues, Shapiro pays special attention to the environmental costs, both intended and unintended, of various political campaigns that characterized the period. As the book's title suggests, Shapiro reminds us that the political violence raged side by side with violence against nature.

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Shapiro uses four themes to organize her arguments and highlights one theme each in successive chapters to put into relief the impact of each theme on environmental degradation during the Mao era. Chapter one focuses on the silencing of original thinkers during the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign. Shapiro first offers us the familiar story of Ma Yinchu, a Columbia University-trained economist who warned of the dangers of rapid population growth. She then discusses the case of Huang Wanli, a hydraulic engineer who argued against the construction of the Sanmenxia Dam on the Yellow River on Soviet models. Because they had spoken truth to despotic power, Ma and Huang, along with tens of thousands of others, were silenced and subjected to years of persecution. The Chinese leadership's failure to heed these honest views led to the adoption of policies with grave consequences: overpopulation in one case and ill-fated dams in the other.

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