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	<title>sustainable china &#187; china</title>
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	<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info</link>
	<description>researching religious values for ecological sustainability</description>
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		<title>religion, ecology and nationalism</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/12/02/religion-ecology-and-nationalism/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/12/02/religion-ecology-and-nationalism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:39:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Questions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bhutan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nationalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=473</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Should environmentalists support conservation projects that also serve to bolster right wing nationalist agendas? This was one of the questions that was discussed last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, in San Francisco. I spoke on a panel organized by the Religion and Ecology section which featured a vibrant discussion on this very issue. One of the key points of discussion that came up was the way in which the alliance of religion and ecology is not necessarily compatible with left / liberal politics. In North America we tend to associate environmental issues with left / liberal politics, and religious organizations that advocate on behalf of environmental issues similarly tend to get associated with those similar politics. As an example of this, at the Forum on Religion and Ecology lunch just a few days earlier, it was quite evident from the conversation that scholars involved in environmental issues largely fell into the left / liberal camp. But just because this is the normative cultural expectation in North America does not necessarily make this the case everywhere else in the world. George James from the University of North Texas, for instance, noted the way in which the [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/12/02/religion-ecology-and-nationalism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>the religion and ecology of the blang minority nationality</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/08/16/religion-and-ecology-in-blang-minority-nationality/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/08/16/religion-and-ecology-in-blang-minority-nationality/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:29:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fieldwork]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=462</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The question of how to promote a culture of ecological sustainability in China took me this summer to conduct exploratory fieldwork among the Blang minority nationality, in Yunnan province, close to the border between China and Myanmar. The Blang are one of China&#8217;s smaller nationality groups and occupy a remote mountainous terrain that is a gruelling and dangerous three-hour drive from the county town of Menghai. The economy of the Blang village where I stayed was based increasingly on the production of tea. Previously subsistence farmers, the villagers had now turned almost exclusively to the production of tea leaves which, when processed, become the famous and expensive pu&#8217;er tea. Since the economic and land reforms after the cultural revolution, the villagers had been steadily converting their lands to the production of tea, with tea bushes now dominating the steeply-terraced mountainsides. After harvesting the tea leaves, the villagers dry and lightly roast the tea leaves before selling them via middlemen to nearby tea factories that ferment, process and package the finished product. The village is distinguished by well-preserved social customs: villagers are divided into a number of exogamous clans; newly married men live in their wife&#8217;s family&#8217;s home for three years; [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2011/08/16/religion-and-ecology-in-blang-minority-nationality/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>ecological civilization</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/11/19/ecological-civilization-2/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/11/19/ecological-civilization-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:44:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecological civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=385</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was in Beijing and Tianjin recently for a week of conferences related to &#8220;ecological civilization&#8221; (shengtai wenming 生态文明) an important new buzzword, the precise meaning of which thought leaders and government officials are vying to define. The first conference I attended was one on &#8220;Traditional Culture and Ecological Civilization&#8221;, held in conjunction with the Beijing branch of the Chinese society for the study of the Yijing. The conference was a curious mix of academics, Daoists, fengshui practitioners and Yijing enthusiasts. From an intellectual point of view, one of the most interesting and radical presentations came from Lu Feng 卢风, a Tsinghua University philosophy professor. His talk began with the bold claim that the era of industrial civilization was at an end, and that to usher in a new era of ecological civilization demanded nothing short of a &#8220;civilization revolution 文明革命&#8221; (in Chinese, just one character different from &#8220;cultural revolution 文化革命&#8221;). In his view, it is necessary to overhaul the intellectual foundations on which our present industrial civilization, and our model of industrial development, are based. In his analysis, ecological civilization represents not just a development of the modern industrial paradigm, but a radical transformation. This view was not universally [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/11/19/ecological-civilization-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>daoist religion and ecotourism: a visit to maoshan</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/09/02/daoist-religion-and-ecotourism-a-visit-to-maoshan/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/09/02/daoist-religion-and-ecotourism-a-visit-to-maoshan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:51:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fieldwork]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=373</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In May this year I had the opportunity to visit Maoshan (Mt. Mao) a Daoist mountain sacred to the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) tradition of Daoism that I studied in my most recent book. Located in Jiangsu province, it is about an hour&#8217;s bus ride south of Zhenjiang, a stop on the main high speed railway from Shanghai to Nanjing. I was interested to visit Maoshan not only because of my historical research, but because it was the site of the Maoshan declaration, which in 2008 committed China&#8217;s Daoist Association to a ten year program of ecological protection. The result of my visit is a mixed assessment of the possibilities and problems associated with the practical implementation of Daoism and ecology. I&#8217;ll be presenting the full details of my conclusions at the forthcoming SASASAAS conference at Furman University on September 24-25, but I&#8217;d like to present some key findings now. First of all, the encounter between Daoism  and Ecology has to be understood from the perspective of China&#8217;s engagement with modernity and especially science. &#8220;Ecology&#8221; in Chinese does not signify a Romantic attachment to nature undefiled by human habitation, but rather a modern, scientific and ultimately technological enterprise. To make Daoist [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2010/09/02/daoist-religion-and-ecotourism-a-visit-to-maoshan/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>china&#8217;s green religion</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/11/05/chinas-green-religion/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/11/05/chinas-green-religion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:24:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=308</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m at the First Summit on Laozi and Daoist Culture, which is taking place this week in Beijing. The Summit is the work of Prof. Hu Fuchen, one of the leading scholars of Daoism, and a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This morning, we had the opening ceremony, which was held in the Great Hall of the People. It was my first time in this magnificent building. The purpose of the conference is basically to promote Daoism throughout China and the World. It is being funded by a wealthy donor, and has received backing at a high level from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Daoism has been something of a poor relative lately. Buddhism is better funded. Confucianism receives a very high level of support form the central government. But to many people, Daoism is poorly understood and associated with superstition. As one of the invited foreign delegates, it seems that my job is to demonstrate international support for this venture, to have my photograph taken along with the 500 or so other delegates, and to be part of the ritual theatre that the organizers have carefully crafted to promote Daoism as an essential ingredient of [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/11/05/chinas-green-religion/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>china&#8217;s greatest contribution to sustainable development</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:39:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aesthetics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainable development]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This week I&#8217;m at a conference on eco-aesthetics at Shu Yen University in Hong Kong. Today we heard the opening speech from Prof. ZENG Fangren, the former president of Shandong University. He runs a research institute on aesthetics, and is one of China&#8217;s leading scholars of eco-aesthetics. In his overview of the field of eco-aesthetics in China, the lasting impression that I received was how the government&#8217;s advocacy of &#8220;ecological civilization&#8221; has had a profound impact on the field. As a result of this leadership, more and more scholars are devoting attention to ecological issues. What fascinated me about his talk was how fluent he was in Western scholarship regarding aesthetics and philosophy. It seems that so often dialogue between China and the west is one-sided, with all Chinese scholars mastering Western discourse and very few Western scholars mastering Chinese discourse. As a result, in the discussions following his presentation, I asked the question of what China can contribute to the world in the areas of eco-aesthetics and sustainability. His first answer was not what I expected. Rather than discussing Chinese wisdom, Confucian philosophy or Daoism, he made a very simple but powerful point. If China can manage its economic [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/14/chinas-greatest-contribution-to-sustainable-development/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>china&#8217;s transition to sustainability</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/01/chinas-transition-to-sustainability/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/01/chinas-transition-to-sustainability/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:10:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=291</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The following is reproduced from today&#8217;s Kingston Whig-Standard. &#160; Change in offing in China, prof says Posted By PAUL SCHLIESMANN Behind today&#8217;s show of military might celebrating its 60th anniversary, the People&#8217;s Republic of China is undergoing significant environmental policy change, according to a Queen&#8217;s University professor. &#8220;Economic expansion has been successful in terms of lifting people out of poverty and bringing economic wealth to China,&#8221; said James Miller, a professor of religious studies at Queen&#8217;s. &#8220;They can&#8217;t keep on doing this for the next 50 or 60 years because the environmental and social costs are very high.&#8221; Miller is part of a movement that believes religious traditions can be used to effect environmental change. This summer, he and a group of academics from the U. S. met with China&#8217;s vice-minister of environmental protection. Miller was encouraged by China&#8217;s announcement at last week&#8217;s G20 meetings in Pittsburgh that it was putting a five-year economic development plan in place that would include an emissions trading system. In the past, Miller said, China would have waited for the United States to take the lead. &#8220;The attitude has been, we&#8217;re a developing country, we&#8217;re not going to make the first move,&#8221; he said. [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/10/01/chinas-transition-to-sustainability/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>china must talk to its religious leaders to create a culture of ecological sustainability</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/09/25/china-must-talk-to-its-religious-leaders-to-create-a-culture-of-ecological-sustainability/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/09/25/china-must-talk-to-its-religious-leaders-to-create-a-culture-of-ecological-sustainability/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:33:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pan Yue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sustainability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the past sixty years China has achieved something close to a miracle when compared with other developing nations. It by and large manages to feed, educate, house and employ its own people. It is not involved in futile and costly military conflicts. It is a creditor nation, not a debtor. Its social and political system provides sufficient stability for the vast majority of its people to pursue their own livelihoods in a rational and predictable way.Yet all this will be lost if the world does not help China to embrace an ecologically sustainable culture. The reason for this is simple. With a population of 1.4 billion, China simply cannot afford to expand its per capita ecological footprint to the level of Europe, let alone America or Canada. Already the stresses on its environment are beginning to take a toll on the social fabric. The Gobi desert is at Beijing’s doorstep and the capital must divert water hundreds of kilometres north from resentful provinces who have to do more with less. The pollution from factories in rural areas prevents farmers from earning a living by growing healthy crops. River life for China’s southern neighbours is threatened by massive hydro-electric projects [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/09/25/china-must-talk-to-its-religious-leaders-to-create-a-culture-of-ecological-sustainability/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>what climate change means for religion in china</title>
		<link>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/08/25/chinese-religious-responses-to-natural-disasters/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/08/25/chinese-religious-responses-to-natural-disasters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:36:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>james</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[buddhism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[natural disaster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[taoism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[typhoon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sustainablechina.info/?p=261</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Much intellectual discourse about Chinese philosophical and religious views of nature focuses on ideals such as harmony between humans and the natural world, or &#8220;forming one body with heaven and earth&#8221; (tian ren he yi). But when it comes to historical studies of Chinese environmental history, it&#8217;s hard to find instances of where this ideal was concretely realized. Mark Elvin concludes his monumental history of China&#8217;s environment with the following observation The religious, philosophical, literary, and historical texts surveyed and translated in the foregoing pages have been rich sources of description, insight, and even, perhaps, inspiration. But the dominant ideas and ideologies, which were often to some degree in contradiction with each other, appear to have little explanatory power in determining why what seems actually to have happened to the Chinese environment happened the way it did. Occasionally, yes, Buddhism helped to safeguard trees around monasteries. The law-enforced mystique shrouding Qing imperial tombs kept their surroundings untouched by more than minimal economic exploitation. but in general, no. There seems no case for thinking that, some details apart, the Chinese anthropogenic environment was developed and maintained in the way it was over the long run of more than three millennia because [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.sustainablechina.info/2009/08/25/chinese-religious-responses-to-natural-disasters/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<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>
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