Although China is one of the world's largest producers and consumers of genetically modified (GM) crops and derived food products, little is known about the level of Chinese consumer awareness, understanding and acceptance of GM food. Initially, China pursued relatively aggressive policies for biotechnology development, but in recent years, the central government has become more sensitive to the potential environmental risks of transgenic food crops. To protect domestic biotech industries, the state plays a critical role in the politics of biotechnology, and does not allow GM food to become a prominent public issue. This contribution reports on a survey of 1,000 urban respondents. It demonstrates that most consumers lack the most basic understanding of biotechnology and its potential risks. The majority of the respondents (60 per cent) were either unwilling to consume GM food or were neutral about the idea, but when given neutrally-worded information about potential GM food allergenicity, the willingness to buy dropped sharply. This might point to future scenarios of consumer resistance against GM food as has happened in European Union member states. This effect demonstrates the malleability of the Chinese consumer in a context of limited understanding and inadequate access to information.

This paper presents an analysis of the adoption and implementation of Chinese environmental policies and pollution abatement measures. It sketches the role of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the recently adopted Five-Year Plan for the years 1996–2000 in coping with China's increasing problems of water, air and soil pollution. Remedial measures, which could be legal, administrative or economic, are analysed both as part of more general programmes of legal and economic reform, and as specific designs for local or sectoral problems. In previous articles, I have discussed several major environmental concerns: environmental damages, scarcity of water, control over emissions by township and village enterprises (TVEs), investments and management methods. The present contribution will focus on wider political issues, such as participatory policies, differences in implementation between regions and sectors, and most recent developments in industrial pollution problems and abatement measures. This survey cannot be complete: the limitations of space and the need to give some concrete examples make it necessary to be selective. Therefore, while some problems will be highlighted – such as water treatment in the Huai River basin, sulphur dioxide emissions, and pollution by TVEs – other problems such as noise pollution will be omitted.

During the past few years, the Chinese government has formulated ambitious plans for building many large hydropower stations, but so far it has withheld final approval for the construction of the majority. The environmental problems and rising cost of coal-fired stations, China's Copenhagen commitment, the creation of a high-voltage national power grid, and the availability of cheap capital should have all worked to the advantage of hydropower. Moreover, present projects require much less resettlement than those in previous decades. However, since 2006 political concern for the social problems of forced migration and distrust of the business alliance between power companies and provincial governments seem to be obstacles. Stricter regulations for environmental impact assessment, more comprehensive planning of water and reservoir use, and a lack of staff have lengthened approval processes. Central and provincial governments do not agree on developmental priorities and electricity prices. Uncertainty about obligations imposed on investing power companies is a factor too. Thus, hydropower policy suffers from conflicting goals and uneven commitment of various bureaucratic interests. Even if a clear policy commitment could improve policy implementation, China's target of 330 GW of regular hydropower capacity in 2020, and thereby its renewable energy target, are unlikely to be met.

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The communist revolution brought a fundamental change in income distribution in rural China. Wealth at the top of rural society and abject poverty at the bottom were both wiped out. The creation of new economic institutions combined the goals of production increase and greater income equality. Experience showed that it was difficult to attain both: land reform was followed by the emergence of new economic inequalities; the people's commune by economic disaster. After the consolidation of the collective production team as the basic economic accounting unit in 1962 the institutional framework underwent little change until 1980. However, an unprecedented growth of the rural population and the technical transformation of agriculture during this same period greatly transformed the economic conditions of China's peasantry.