Rethinking Mao-Era Environmental Consciousness: Baohu (Protection/Conservation) Discourse and the Development of Socialist Conservation Policy, 1956–62

In the field of Chinese environmental history, Mao era (1949-1976) has been long considered to be devoid of environmental concern and isolated from the international development of environmental consciousness. My paper challenges the premise by considering Chinese scientific discussions and conservation policy in the context of the international development of environmental consciousness during that time. In the mid-1950s, Chinese scientists began extensive discussions of environmental concepts such as ecology, extinction, and natural protection. These embryonic discussions of nature conservation in the 1950s became the cornerstone of China’s successive creation of natural reserves, state-initiated hunting regulations, and public natural protection education in the 1960s.

Analyzing the scientific and political rhetoric of nature protection from 1956 to 1962, the paper questions whether one can apply the existing concept of environmental consciousness mainly derived from American and European contexts to the People’s Republic. English speakers differentiate the protection of natural resources and conservation of species. However, in Chinese, the ideas of protection and conservation often merged into one word, baohu. The PRC discourse of baohu, formulated through the global discussion of nature protection in the 1950s and the 1960s, was a messy entanglement of political, economic, environmental, and scientific values that determined the state protection of certain species. I argue that only through the investigation of baohu discourse in all its messiness can we gain full insight into Chinese nature protection and conservation policies.