On Care, Opposition, and River World Dynamics: The Nu River Anti-dam Campaign (2003−2016) in China

ABSTRACT

Crisis and care have been paired as complementary terms. The dialectical relationship invests itself within and across planetary biomes that struggle to thrive. China is a land of ancient heritage and abundant rivers, as well as a drive to modernize through hydropower and electricity. This essay focuses on the important case of the Nu River controversy to add to the corpus of care and crisis discourse in environmental communication. This example requires a move outside the over-determination of spaces that involve episodes of immediate stories of protracted engagement. In a study of how Chinese ENGOs and environmentalists fought hard in a 13-year-long battle to save China’s last natural river, I illustrate China’s ways of working through assertions of crisis, opposition to care, and an outcome opened by new care strategies for creating consensus.

KEYWORDS:

• ENGO
• environmental advocacy campaign
• hydropower
• crisis
• care strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While the plan to build hydropower stations on the trunk stream of the Nu River was permanently shelved in 2016, some small private enterprises built dozens of small hydropower stations on the tributaries of the Nu River, which are now still in operation. However, requests to build more small hydropower stations on the tributaries were rejected by the government in 2016.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of the Chinese Ministry of Education for the research titled “The construction of discourse theory and empirical research on China’s focal environmental issues based on the perspective of environmental communication”, under grant number [18YJA860007].