of continued expansion in number of PAs, with attempts at rationalization of the overall system. Protected areas were included within China’s Biodiversity Action Plan, and in 1995 the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) pledged US$18 million to improve management of nature reserves. Two other factors led to an exponential increase in protected areas: natural disasters and regional economic development projects. Large-scale droughts and floods in 1997 and 1998 alerted elites to the significant rate of ecological deterioration, which prompted Premier Zhu Rongji’s ban

comprehensive data bases on biodiversity.3 Ecology as a discipline is barely two decades old. Although China has benefited from foreign expertise, this tends to be localized to specific regions and species. Commentators often speak of the ‘ten lost years’ of higher education due to the Cultural Revolution, which had an extremely deleterious effect on the natural sciences. Even after the onset of reforms in the late 1970s, professors, curricula, and textbooks remained out-of-date. One of our respondents, reflecting on his undergraduate education in the early 1980s, recalled

nature of policy statement than statute, the laws are transparent and enforceable. They can be broadly classified into four types: general environmental protection, pollution prevention, ecosystem protection, and species protection. China’s basic environmental law is the Environmental Protection Law, adopted in 1979 and amended in 1989. This legislation stipulates that governments at all levels should establish nature reserves to protect important natural ecosystems, habitats for rare and endangered wild animals and plants, watershed and relic sites. One of the chief

implement carefully, through a host of provincial and local governments, legislation such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act of 2003 and the Wild Animal Conservation Act of 1988. One of our respondents saw two sources to administrative problems: ‘First is economic development and an awareness of differences in economic interests. Different levels of government have different interests; but our government structure is unitary, and it assumes that everyone will share the same interest. This is delusion of thought … The state does compromise, but decision

socialization. The most successful cases of environmental work at his school are resource recycling and the classification of wastes.12 Other ENGOs such as the Wilderness Society (WS) also promote environmental education. Chang Hung-lin, the WS Secretary General, mentioned his interest in a division of labor with other ENGOs. Instead of joining large-scale mass movements, the WS provides a platform for the general public to learn from Mother Nature, with an emphasis on educating the middle class. It uses multiple channels to engage the middle class, such as the Internet