By Jaeah J. Lee

In the last year, three films have helped us better understand the repercussions of China’s speedy development. STILL LIFE, UP THE YANGTZE, and MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES provide three different lenses to observe the devastation that China’s industrial mega projects have brought upon the nation’s population and natural environment. Jia Zhangke’s STILL LIFE and Yung Chang’s UP THE YANGTZE both center on a few among the millions of lives and livelihoods being uprooted by the Three Gorges Dam, whose stories of forced resettlement and separation from loved ones are at once emotionally restrained and deeply personal. Jennifer Baichwal’s MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, which brings Edward Burtynsky’s breathtaking and unsettling landscape photography into motion, explores the impact that we humans have had on the world around us.

Straddling crude fact and cinematic imagination, the films document the grave uncertainties underlying the social and environmental challenges posed by China’s economic miracle. While they carefully refrain from making broader judgments about humans impact on nature, they make clear that a deep impact is, in fact, being made; in the lost stare of spouses whose past memories are submerged underwater, in the silent sobs of parents who cannot send their daughter to boat cruise instead of high school, in the outstretched rows of mechanical clatter and robotic movements made by blue-collared factory workers. By telling nothing of the rights or wrongs of industrialization and its hallmark, the Three Gorges Dam, STILL LIFE, UP THE YANGTZE, and MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES say everything about the pain and peril that hundreds of millions of Chinese people now face. Ironically, the nature of China’s economic leap is demolishing the lives of the very people who made it possible in the first place.

What the films do not mention is that there is still reason to be optimistic about China’s environmental dilemma: the grassroots environmental movement within China that is gaining momentum and maturing each day. The number of Chinese environmental groups officially-registered as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has multiplied from a handful in the early 1990s to over 2,000 today—and many other groups operate unofficially. Led by lawyers, journalists, and scholars, China’s environmentalists are undertaking a range of campaigns to raise awareness of waste recycling, urban sustainability, and nature conservation. Because of these groups, lawsuits and public demonstrations against polluting factories and dam construction are becoming more commonplace. Equipped with the ability to educate and draw together masses of people, local environmental groups stand at the vanguard of China’s environmental efforts. The Chinese Government recognizes the importance of civil society in advancing its national environmental agenda, one reason why Chinese environmental NGOs are granted more political space than, for example, pro-democracy or certain religious groups. Still, they, too, operate within a politically and operationally constrained atmosphere, with corrupt local officials, funding and staffing shortages. In rural China, environmental activism tends to be localized, isolated, and do-it-yourself in nature as a result.

In a sense, films like STILL LIFE, UP THE YANGTZE, and MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES have the potential to mobilize a larger audience, to bridge the gap between isolated environmental activism and a large-scale, politically-driven environmental movement. Through their subtle poignancy, the films leave their audiences with a residual sense of doom cast by the social and environmental wounds inflicted upon its characters. By raising concerns and questions about the social and environmental consequences of China’s rapid economic development, they serve as springboards for discussion and debate and breeding grounds for new ideas—ideas that can move China and the world around it toward a more sustainable future.

For the time being, however, real environmental progress in China remains to be seen. The mere fact that these films’ high were highly acclaimed at international independent film festivals, rather than at Chinese film awards or box offices, is a sign that China is not yet comfortable with letting film—or civil society—influence fundamental change.

Jaeah J. Lee is a research associate in the Asia Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Photo credit: Jonathan Chang; from UP THE YANGTZE, directed by Yung Chang.

See also: China and the Environment