Introduction—Environment, Modernization, and Development in East Asia: Perspectives from Environmental History

Abstract

Across East Asia, modernization and development projects continue to have great environmental and human impacts. Serious health problems resulting from pollution affect many Chinese, including those living in Beijing, whose `airpocalypse' has attracted worldwide attention.1 As a measure of its significance, in 2013, Premier Li Keqiang declared that only through `the concerted effort of the whole society' could the problem be addressed.2 Since then, government has made improvements to air quality, but sometimes at the expense of moving the problem elsewhere, through relocating heavy-polluting industries away from the capital, although recent efforts have also been directed at cutting pollution and restricting the number of registered cars.3