雾霾与污染的社会起源 The Social Origin of Our Air Pollution

"New Year's Eve." Gouache on paper. Qiao Liang. 2017

First thing first, I have no scientific proof to support whatever I am about to say on our environmental damages. I am simply concerned as an ordinary man living in this city, who suffers from toxic air pollution. Very possibly, you do too.

There are studies showing that many of us who are deeply concerned with our environmental sustainability are those who also question the regime’s legitimacy. I suggest that these are the people who are materially much better off compared to many of those who could be just barely on their feet. You have to be educated enough to become environmentally concerned; and in our society, it often indicates that you are financially capable of gaining the amount of education that satisfies you. So I argue, the environmental contaminations are not failures of the administration;not caused by GDP-driven growth; instead, it is the contradiction of the rise of our bourgeoisie.

IT IS THE PROCESS.

Bourgeoisie, however defined by whoever, are economically accomplished yet politically demanding and socially in the middle. The formation of this class in history and in every other society represents the process of massive and unstoppable appetites for constant consumptions. Not only does this group consume natural resources, but it also demands its own ideological if not religious identification. Economic competitions with state-owned firms, chaotic ideological explanations, and damaged environment, they are the most recognizable signs of the rise of this group in our society.Whether you are one of the group or you are not, its rise has once and forever changed the socio-political arena that determines the direction where our country heads to.

People put the blames on the administration; they are unhappy that the administration has not done enough. Without defending anyone in this trial, I argue that the administration has done well. Perhaps too well on one side that other sides are overshadowed by it. The administration has been promoting the rise of our bourgeoisie for decades and prepared the society for peaceful market-economy transition by reducing the costs of essential elements for capitalist development. It has done well by having midwifed a gigantic social class that has never existed inour history. When this social class came to the world, it consumes, it competes, and it controverts. It was foreseeable that having a self-sustaining bourgeoisie would be beneficial for other existing social groups; however, it was not foreseen by the elites at the beginning that this class contains some of the most controversial consequences that development would also deliver. It is of our bourgeois nature to demolish, renew, and rebalance. These bourgeoisie do not always stir up a revolution, especially in our case. But you can find bourgeoisie in every modern revolution where they were constantly jumping between boats.

Bourgeoisie have often failed the historians, but they have never failed history. In our case, no bourgeoisie, no air pollution.