Environmental management of Soochow Creek in China from the 1920s–1970s: A historical perspective

This article investigates the politics behind the technologies used in Soochow Creek's environmental management during the 1920s–1970s. The management of Soochow Creek was quietly introduced in the 1920s. Under the pattern of “One City of Three Governments”, the Nanking National Government did not adopt opinions from either the British or the American concessions. With limited resources for governance, the Communist Party of China (CPC) regime transformed an environmental governance project into one designed to win the public mind. The case of Soochow Creek confirms that even in Shanghai, the most modernized city in China, not only did Western technology have little influence on regional contamination governance before 1949 but also the Soviet model was consistently excluded from the Tu (local approach) due to its Yang (foreign approach). Although large-scale mass movements rarely worked to address river pollution, they did strategically guarantee a stable government under continuous environmental contamination. The findings also indicate that the adoption of foreign or local approaches was as much a political issue as a technical issue in the context of modern China.