The politics of industrial pollution in rural China

After more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental crisis. The rural industrial sector, which includes millions of loosely regulated factories and employs hundreds of millions of workers, is a major focal point of this crisis. This paper provides a critical review of scholarship on industrial pollution in rural China and advances a new framework for thinking about the topic as a political domain with three inter-related parts:• The politics of knowledge: What do rural citizens know about environmental contamination, and how do they know they know it? What sources of information are available to the public regarding pollution incidents? How does uncertainty about pollution sources and severity, as well as the potential links to health risks, shape rural peoples' experience of pollution?• The politics of action: What strategies do individuals, communities and civil society organizations use to combat pollution? What outcomes are associated with such strategies?• The politics of regulation: How are national laws and policies regarding pollution control implemented in rural areas? How do agencies and enforcement officials balance the competing objectives of environmental protection and economic growth?The paper concludes by considering the implications of this framework for how scholars understand industrial pollution in rural China and briefly discussing a future research agenda for this field.