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	<title>sustainable china &#187; Questions</title>
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	<description>researching religious values for ecological sustainability</description>
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		<title>what is freedom of religion for?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/06/17/what-is-freedom-of-religion-for/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/06/17/what-is-freedom-of-religion-for/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:22:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=247</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There is hardly a truth more sacred to the contemporary American imagination than that religion must be free from interference by the state and that the state must be free from interference from religion. Neither of these ideals holds true in China, and this fact is an enormous thorn in the side of Chinese-American relations, especially as regards the Tibet question. The fact is that religions and the state in China have co-existed in something of a symbiotic relationship for thousands of years. In medieval China, Buddhists seeking to ingratiate themselves in the life of the court proposed rituals to bring about the salvation and prosperity of the empire. Daoist priests also ordained emperors and oversaw court rituals. In return, the Emperor bestowed his patronage on monasteries and temples, granting them land, money and prestige. At the heart of this arrangement was a very simple and natural proposition: you help me and I&#8217;ll help you. Similar versions of this arrangement operated in medieval Europe until they were disturbed by the Protestant reformation. In the wake of this upheaval, zealous sects fuelled by pious visions of absolute purity sought to cut themselves off completely from the state and create utopian societies [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>does environmental science lead to environmental action?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/04/03/does-environmental-science-lead-to-environmental-action/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/04/03/does-environmental-science-lead-to-environmental-action/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:41:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=228</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have just finished teaching my undergraduate course on religion and the environment. Most of the students are in engineering or environmental science, and the course fulfills a humanities requirement for them. It&#8217;s been fascinating teaching scientists about religion, as you can imagine, but it&#8217;s also been hard. One of the most serious problems that I&#8217;ve had to deal with among my students is the basic assumption that seems to be taught in environmental science, namely that knowing more about the environment is the best way to generate action on the environment. This assumption is, from a historical perspective, hard to justify. The development of the modern scientific view of nature has not been accompanied by an enhanced respect for nature. Rather, scientific knowledge of the environment has swept away any traditional sense of nature as sacred or deserving of respect. At the same time it has enabled massive industrial exploitation of natural resources without regard for ecological sustainability. Now I&#8217;m not against science. Far from it. But I am against the simplistic fallacy that knowing about the environment necessarily leads to better adaptation to the environment. The cultural anthropologist Roy Rappaport long ago made the important distinction between the [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/04/03/does-environmental-science-lead-to-environmental-action/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>is democracy good for sustainability?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/02/23/is-democracy-good-for-sustainability/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/02/23/is-democracy-good-for-sustainability/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:54:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gus Speth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pan Yue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=224</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m teaching a course in religion and the environment this term, and my students are preparing to debate this very question: is democracy good for sustainability? By way of background, they have been reading Judith Shapiro&#8217;s book Mao&#8217;s War Against Nature, which forcefully details the way that Maoist ideology trumped scientific reason in charting China&#8217;s development in the twentieth century, resulting in famine, population explosion, and environmental disaster. The question is, does this argument still hold today? In his recent International Herald Tribune op-ed about Pan Yue, vice-minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Daniel Gardner writes approvingly of China&#8217;s new-found faith in sustainability (props to John Liu at Yale University for sending me the link). Gardner says: &#8230; Chinese indifference to the environment is a myth. In the last few years China has begun to take aggressive action to bring its air and water pollution under control. Here are a few examples: China&#8217;s fuel-efficiency standard for cars is currently pegged at 43 miles per gallon, which means that when America&#8217;s 2020 standards of 35 mpg go into effect they&#8217;ll be lower than China&#8217;s minimum standard of today. Coal-fired plants must install or retrofit filtering devices in their smokestacks. Chief executives of companies found [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>did china&#8217;s dams trigger the sichuan earthquake?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/29/did-chinas-dams-trigger-the-sichuan-earthquake/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/29/did-chinas-dams-trigger-the-sichuan-earthquake/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:54:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earthquake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nature]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=211</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[China&#8217;s massive system of hydroelectric dams and water distribution has come under fire once again. Right after the devastating Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, in which over 70,000 people lost their lives, officials rushed to deny that the massive Three Gorges Dam complex hundreds of kilometres downstream could have played any role in triggering the natural disaster. Now officials are working hard to  play down a call by Fan Xiao, Chief Engineer of the Regional Geology Investigation Team of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, for scientists to investigate whether the Zipingpu dam project, located upstream of the quake area, may have triggered the earthquake. Fan&#8217;s call comes in the wake of a paper by Christian Klose at Columbia University which theorized how abnormal surface stresses caused by the Zipingpu dam system may have triggered the massive earthquake. Klose&#8217;s hypothesis also matches work conducted by Lei Xinglin a geologist with the China Earthquake Administration in Beijing. According to a recent article in Science magazine, Fan says that although the hypothesis that the dam triggered the earthquake as yet remains unproven, &#8216;We should readjust our existing plans and take a more cautious attitude when planning projects.&#8221;  He doubts, however, that his [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/29/did-chinas-dams-trigger-the-sichuan-earthquake/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>religious traditions and the future of east asia</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/19/religious-traditions-and-the-future-of-east-asia/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/19/religious-traditions-and-the-future-of-east-asia/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:25:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[buddhism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Confucianism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=203</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s three reasons why China&#8217;s traditional religions and cultures will play an increasingly important role in the East Asian political scene.  In mainland China, more people than ever are turning to religion. An interview with Arrianna Liu, who works in a Beijing-based NGO, reported that it&#8217;s not just the government&#8217;s attitudes that have changed. Ordinary people are now more curious about religion, and more tolerant of it, especially foreign religions such as Christianity. Confucianism is increasingly being recognized as part of the social fabric that holds East Asian society together. Chinese scholars such as Kang Xiaoguang at Renmin University in Beijing, which has traditionally trained the cadre ranks of the Communist Party, openly advocate a more direct reliance on Confucian values for future policy directions. Moreover, Confucianism is also key to understanding East Asian society from Korea to Vietnam. And it is also a source of controversy for diaspora Chinese living in Indonesia.  Buddhism is playing an important bridging role in relations between mainland China and Taiwan. China&#8217;s second World Buddhist Forum is being held in the spring this year and is being held jointly between the mainland and Taiwan. Academics and Buddhist teachers will be holding the first part [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/19/religious-traditions-and-the-future-of-east-asia/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>what has become of china&#8217;s eco-cities?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/08/chinas-eco-cities/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/08/chinas-eco-cities/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:35:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chongming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dongtan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eco-city]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shanghai]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=193</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There has been much news lately that the project to design a massive eco-city on Chongming Island near Shanghai may finally have fizzled out. The project, designed by the British engineering firm Arup, would have created a low carbon-footprint city called Dongtan, just a thirty-minute boat ride from Shanghai. In its first phase, to have been completed in time for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, it would have created housing for 50,000 people. At three quarters of the size of Manhattan Island, the project could eventually have housed half a million people, connected to the mainland via a network of bridges and tunnels. What went wrong? And, as Andrew Revkin asks in his New York Times blog, is growth still trumping green? The answer has more to do with local politics than anything else. The Arup project was delayed in part due to the purging of the communist party leadership in Shanghai in the wake of a 2006 scandal in which money was embezzled from social security funds to pay for land development deals. In the ensuing political climate, it was impossible for major investment projects to take place until new financial accountability structures were put in place. Caught in this [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/01/08/chinas-eco-cities/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>i&#8217;m dreaming of a green christmas</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/22/im-dreaming-of-a-green-christmas/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/22/im-dreaming-of-a-green-christmas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:53:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[consumerism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=173</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By James Miller Christmas, as we all know, is the grand festival of the religion of consumerism. We pay homage to our saviour Santa Claus in the vast cathedral of the shopping mall. There we make a sizeable donation to the faltering economy and, just because it’s Christmas, cheerfully pay the GST to our non-existent government. We stagger home laden under the weight of a vast array of glittering gifts. We then dress them in the finest of wrappings and reverently lay them at the foot of the sacred tree. Over a sacrificial meal of turkey and pinot noir our family bonds are strengthened, relationships renewed, and we settle into a blissful oblivion before the television set. A friend of mine, however, recently told me of his plans to inject some ethical concern into this time-honoured ritual. My friend, like countless millions in the West, is part of a new breed of shopper, the “ethical consumer.” And this year he decided he wasn’t going to buy his children any toys made in China. His reasoning was that China has lax environmental regulations and poor safety standards. When I asked him whether he thought that this would cost him more money, [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/22/im-dreaming-of-a-green-christmas/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>closing the religion deficit</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/14/closing-the-religion-deficit/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/14/closing-the-religion-deficit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:13:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=152</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By James Miller An editorial in Friday&#8217;s Dallas Morning News argued that Hillary Clinton, the incoming U.S. Secretary of State, should move to &#8220;close our diplomats&#8217; religion deficit.&#8221; The argument was that in order to succeed in international relations, it&#8217;s vital for the state department to understand the role religion plays in shaping the politics and culture of the world. This, in fact, was the theme of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright&#8217;s book The Mighty and The Almighty: Reflections on God, Man and World Affairs. In modern culture, religion is understood as something that belongs to the private realm, not the public realm. The consequence of this is that people involved in world affairs such as politicians and journalists are trained to deliberately ignore the role played by religion in shaping people&#8217;s values and attitudes. Religion, it is argued, plays a diminishing role in the world and is therefore best forgotten. World affairs are to be explained by economics, politics and culture, in that order. This results in a &#8220;religion deficit&#8221; or a lack of basic &#8220;religious literacy,&#8221; as the title of Stephen Prothero&#8217;s recent book put it.  The fact is, however, that we do not live in a modern [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/14/closing-the-religion-deficit/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>is china&#8217;s one child policy environmentally ethical?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/05/is-chinas-one-child-policy-environmentally-ethical/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/05/is-chinas-one-child-policy-environmentally-ethical/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:39:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecological footprint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental ethics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[one child policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[population]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=84</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By James Miller I&#8217;ve been following Andrew Revkin&#8217;s dot Earth blog at the New York Times. The tag-line of the blog is &#8220;Nine Billion People. One Planet&#8221; and is premised on the demographic likelihood that by 2050 the world&#8217;s population will have increased from six to nine billion, effectively adding another two Chinas to what we have already.  At the same time, the populations of China, Brazil and India are developing their economies at a relatively rapid rate which means that those populations will be commanding a larger ecological footprint than they are doing already. China&#8217;s 2001 ecological footprint was 1.5 global hectares per person. Canada&#8217;s was 6.4. Assuming that China&#8217;s economic development will bring about an expansion of its ecological footprint, the results could be catastrophic to say the least. China has 20% of the current world&#8217;s population but only 13% of China&#8217;s land mass is arable land. Economic development, moreover, has brought about a rapid deterioration in the quality of the natural environment, and a shrinking in the amount and quality of arable land. One tenth of China&#8217;s 120 million hectares of arable land is now contaminated, and China seems increasingly unable to provide itself with a necessary level of [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/05/is-chinas-one-child-policy-environmentally-ethical/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>environmental law or environmental ethics?</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/04/environmental-law-or-environmental-ethics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2008/12/04/environmental-law-or-environmental-ethics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:09:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecological consciousness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=59</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By James Miller The image of China in the Western media is often that of a monolithic totalitarian state, run by a cabal of shady figures in Beijing whose decisions affect the lives of downtrodden millions. When I bring visitors to experience the incredibly vibrant new China, the most common reaction I get is &#8220;I did not expect it to be like this!&#8221; This tells me that many people in the West have a strong idea of what China is like. It&#8217;s just the wrong idea. One of the most important thing that anyone who has spent time in China realizes, is that China is a very diverse, almost chaotic, country. Although the rhetoric of nationalism is very strong both from Beijing and from the people,  this points to the fact that China is still in the process of constructing a national identity for itself our of the fluid mix of languages, nationalities and cultures that occupy its borders. Chinese national unity is an ideal, rather than a reality, something aspired towards rather than concretely realized. (This also helps explain why China is so anxious about Tibet and Taiwan.) Even though we are always told that Han Chinese make up 93% [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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