Environmental Conservation or the Treadmill of Law: A Case Study of the Post-2014 Husbandry Waste Regulations in China

Abstract

As industrialized animal agriculture expanded rapidly in the last decade, the resultant pollution has generated widespread despoliation of natural resources and environmental victimization in rural China. This study examines the formulation and implementation of national environmental regulations from 2014 to 2019 and finds that the juxtaposing ministerial and provincial jurisdictions resulted in conflicting interpretations of the scale and evaluation criteria of the national policy. We argue that the regulations are more than centralized conservation programs designed to reduce environmental pollution caused by the expansion of animal husbandry. Instead, these regulations are fundamentally state-led rural development initiatives that utilize the designations of ecological protection zones to reconfigure land use and promote scale-up production in agricultural structural adjustment initiatives. The enforcement of these environmental regulations, therefore, constitutes a treadmill of law (ToL) that accelerated the geographical specialization and function intensification of the Chinese husbandry sector.

Keywords

husbandry waste control agro-industrialization treadmill of production treadmill of law China

Introduction

The social and environmental harms generated by industrialized animal agriculture in China have been extensive. Industrialized animal agriculture is an intensified form of animal production linked with the spatial concentration of animals that produces substantial pollution to the surrounding air, water, and land. The emergence of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) represents more than just a technological change in production; it is a political project that takes place through a chain of accumulation. In the case of China, the central government has formally worked to transform its agricultural and animal husbandry sectors through “dragon-headed enterprises,” where the state and corporate elites work together to “consolidate a robust domestic agribusiness sector” (Schneider, 2017, p. 3). In China, the regulation of animal husbandry and waste management is especially crucial due to China’s connection with the global production and consumption of meat. In 2018, animal husbandry in China achieved a total production value of 411 billion USD, accounting for 25.3% of the total production value of the agriculture and forestry sector (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2019). Pollution caused by intensified hog production places enormous pressure on China’s environment. According to the 12th Five Year Plan for National Husbandry Pollution Prevention, the total estimated chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen discharges from animal husbandry increased rapidly in the 2000s, reaching 11.48 million ton and 0.65 million ton, respectively, in 2012, representing 45% of the national COD and 25% of the ammonia nitrogen discharges. The expansion of industrial animal agriculture in the last decade has significantly intensified water shortage and soil pollution in northern China (Schneider, 2017).

The disproportionate impact of industrial animal agriculture on China’s rural regions and the responding environmental social control mechanisms create a particular case for green criminology as it is linked with social displacement and injustice, the deterioration of habitats, extensive air and water pollution as well as regulation formulation and enforcement in a centralized state. Existing research in green criminology on industrialized animal agriculture has focused primarily on the institutionalized practices of harm in the “animal industrial complex,” while other studies that focus on Chinese rural development, environmental protection, and rural governance examine the processes of metabolic rift, agro-industrialization, and the impacts of the developmental state. However, few studies critically examine the statecraft of environmental social control and related social and ecological disorganization generated by agro-industrialization through the treadmill of production (ToP) (Schnaiberg et al., 2002) and Treadmill of Law (ToL) (Lynch et al., 2020). To analyze the environmental and social harm of industrial animal agriculture, we examine the regulatory landscape of husbandry waste in China, with a special focus on the years following 2014. Prior to 2014, husbandry waste regulations were ineffective due to the lack of enforcement, a contradictory regulatory landscape, and unclear legal sanctions for violations; however, in 2014, China advanced the 2014 Regulation on the Prevention and Control of Pollution from Large-scale Breeding of Livestock and Poultry (hereafter, the 2014 Regulation), representing a substantial change to the legal framework in which livestock producers operate. In the next section, we discuss our methods and data. We then proceed to discuss the theoretical approach of green criminology and its application to the ecological and social disorganization generated by industrial animal agriculture. We undergird our case study with a historical timeline of husbandry pollution regulations in China and examine the impact and outcomes of the 2014 Regulation, which constitutes a substantial turn in China’s regulatory framework as it provided legal sanctions for pollutant discharges, promoted CAFO production styles, and rationalized animal husbandry through increased focus on efficiency, quantifiable measures, and zoning laws. We focus on the growth and impacts of pig husbandry in rural China, specifically on how the Chinese central government has simultaneously utilized the “precautionary principle” and the “precautionary logic” in environmental social control to advance the development of industrialized animal husbandry while attempting to mitigate its subsequent social and environmental harms throughout rural China. In sum, our analysis reveals that the relocation and capitalization of husbandry operations to hinterland regions have led to the transference of environmental harm and a regime of permission in regulation enforcement as less-privileged rural populations must shoulder the environmental and social harm caused by the intensification of industrialized agriculture.

Methods and Data

This study uses data from government documents, policy papers, official statistics, and reports from state-owned media to examine the formulation and implementation of husbandry waste regulations in China from 2014 to 2019. We selected and analyzed the planning and implementation guidelines of husbandry waste control programs in Anhui, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Heilongjiang, and Fujian provinces based on ecological and geographical diversity as well as comparable levels of regional economic development. We also analyzed provincial, prefectural, and county-level husbandry development and zoning plans as well as policy reports on water pollution, economic development, and “agricultural modernization” initiatives in these provinces. All of the husbandry development and pollution control programs we examined were formulated and implemented after 2014 when the Chinese central government adopted a more centralized environmental governance model. These reports aided in understanding the formal approaches to the development of industrial animal agriculture, the management of husbandry waste and rural development as well as the official strategies for improving accountability and public oversight in environmental governance. Given that pollution caused by husbandry waste has generated nationwide press coverage in China, the authors also collected publications from national and provincial news outlets to examine the media interpretation of environmental law enforcement in the selected provinces (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Density of Hog husbandry at provincial level in 2017.

The second source of our data came from 12 in-depth interviews with operators of backyard, specialized household, and large-scale CAFO pig farms as well as 15 in-depth interviews with prefectural and county environmental protection and agricultural development officials in Anhui, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Heilongjiang, and Fujian provinces. Moreover, the authors used snowball sampling to interview 12 grassroots state agents working for the villages and townships near the husbandry operations to examine how villagers and state agents understood the purposes, policy instruments, and administrative approaches of the post-2014 regulatory regime. We utilized snowball sampling to collect diverse perspectives from stakeholders in rural communities whose lives were directly impacted by the implementation of the husbandry waste and “pig relocation” policies. The bottom-up perspective of the regulatory landscape augmented our analysis by providing a more nuanced understanding of policy implementation in addition to the official rationale listed in planning guidelines and state media reports. These semistructured interviews were conducted in nine separate field trips between 2015 and 2017. All interviews occurred in the informants’ homes or offices and lasted 1 to 2 hours. These interviews were recorded with consent from the informants for later review, which was transcribed and analyzed based on major themes such as target fulfillment in policy implementation, enforcement tactics at the grassroots level, evaluation criteria of noncompliance, interagency cooperation, changes in husbandry production, and allocation of land resources in rural communities. The analysis of interview data was then cross-referenced with results from planning guidelines, news reports, and notes from the interviewer’s observation. From 2017 to 2019, the authors maintained communication with 15 key informants to capture their changing perspectives on husbandry waste control policies and verify the validity and representativeness of the authors’ interpretations.

Green Criminology and Industrial Animal Agriculture

Green criminology has recently called for a deeper examination of the social and environmental harm caused by industrial animal agriculture and the resultant over-exploitation and despoliation of natural resources (Agnew, 2013; Brisman et al., 2014; Fitzgerald, 2015; Fitzgerald et al., 2009; Gray & Hinch, 2015; McClanahan & Linnemann, 2018; Stretesky et al., 2003; Taylor & Fitzgerald, 2018; Wyatt, 2014). Industrial animal agriculture can be viewed as an “animal industrial complex” (AIC) composed of a “connected structure of vested interests” between state and corporate actors who commodify and exploit nonhuman animals for monopolist capital accumulation (Taylor & Fitzgerald, 2018; Twine, 2012). Scholars from critical animal studies and green criminology take a species justice perspective and argue that the anthropocentric bias of mainstream criminology and victimology results in an instrumentalist framing of nonhuman animals that legitimizes institutional harm and abuse (Brisman et al., 2014). The intensification of industrial animal agriculture in recent decades has reinforced the global expansion of the grain–oilseeds–livestock complex, directly contributing to extensive monoculture, land grabbing, deforestation, food insecurity, and the overconsumption of fossil fuels and water resources (Fitzgerald, 2015; Goyes & South, 2015; Schneider, 2014; Weis, 2013). Waste runoff from factory farms generates significant environmental externalities including substantial soil, air, and water pollution and is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (Blanchette, 2018; Schally, 2017; Taylor & Fitzgerald, 2018). From a public health perspective, the aerosolized fecal particle from waste lagoons and spray fields is an industrial emission that can spread antibiotic-resistant pathogens, cause zoonotic diseases, and reshape “local and distant environments” (Blanchette, 2019; Fitzgerald, 2015; Wyatt, 2014). Research has also shown that the presence of factory farms in rural communities directly correlates to higher risks of violent crime, poverty, and environmental injustice (Fitzgerald, 2015; Fitzgerald et al., 2009; Jacques, 2015; Stretesky et al., 2003). As such, industrial animal farming generates significant social and ecological disorganization that threatens the sustainability of rural communities around the world and the global ecology.

The social and ecological disorganization generated by industrial animal farming can be explained through the ToP perspective (Taylor & Fitzgerald, 2018). In this view, capitalist systems of production require constant growth and increasing profit margins. The process of competition between companies leads to the concentration of capital and the constant search for the cheapest inputs in raw materials, labor, and machinery. The quest for inputs and the concentration of capital drive the ToP. As raw materials are sourced from the natural environment, it places the economy and ecological systems in conflict (Schnaiberg et al., 2002). Capitalist production logics are dependent on withdrawals and additions from the natural environment that influence socioeconomic relationships within the global ToP (Greife & Stretesky, 2013; Schnaiberg et al., 2002; Stretesky et al., 2013). The industrial animal farming industry, therefore, represents “capital’s metabolization of nature” (McClanahan & Linnemann, 2018, p. 517). The need to accelerate capital accumulation drives the global expansion of CAFOs, causing the separation of crop and livestock production and widespread pollution from husbandry waste and chemical fertilizer (Weis, 2013). The geographical and spatial concentration of CAFOs disembeds agricultural production from the biological and social relations that sustain rural communities (Stretesky et al., 2003). The process reconfigures rural space as a “production base for surplus value” and a “sink” for externalities generated by capitalist agro-industrialization (Schneider, 2015, 2017). Furthermore, the vertically integrated structure of CAFOs dispossesses rural natural resources and labor value to support the chain of accumulation in urban centers and, in the process, transfers the social and environmental harm of meat production and consumption to rural communities, leaving a legacy of farm loss, food insecurity, environmental injustice, and urban–rural stratification (Blanchette, 2018; Schneider, 2014; Weis, 2013). Nevertheless, the collusion of treadmill actors in industrial animal agriculture fundamentally shapes the socio-legal framework of environmental governance that normalizes the environmentally and socially harmful practices of CAFOs (Brisman et al., 2014; Gray & Hinch, 2015; McClanahan & Linnemann, 2018; Schally, 2017; Wyatt, 2014).

The severe contamination of water and soil resources by manure and the subsequent public health and environmental justice issues caused by the rapid global proliferation of CAFOs is also a form of “brown crime,” as it is connected with the externalities caused by the expansion of global capitalism (Brisman & South, 2019). Despite the highly localized nature of environmental pollution, environmental social control mechanisms for industrial animal agriculture in western capitalist societies often fail to achieve their intended purposes (Wyatt, 2014). The “implementation deficit” of environmental regulation enforcement can be caused by the regulatory regime’s limited financial and technical resources, its inability to collaborate beyond jurisdictional boundaries, and the socio-cultural constraints embedded within state institutions (Brisman & South, 2019). Moreover, the formulation and enforcement of environmental regulations serve as a “Treadmill of Law” (ToL) that reinforces and legitimizes the expansion of the ToP (Lynch et al., 2020). The ToL results from the state’s conflicting regulatory roles as the facilitator of capital accumulation and the protector of ecosystems. Since state legitimacy depends on the job opportunities and tax revenue created by continuous economic growth, it often allows corporate actors to influence the environmental regulatory regime (Greife & Stretesky, 2013; Stretesky et al., 2013). According to Lynch et al. (2020), the ToL will resist “enhancements of environmental regulations that criminalize ecologically destructive behaviors of the ToP and its agents” by manipulating the definitions of crime and harm” (p. 4). The ToL will only apply criminal sanctions under two circumstances: (a) when treadmill actors generate severe ecological and social disorganization that threatens the legitimacy of the state and (b) when political resistance hinders the expansion of the ToP. In this way, environmental social control serves to facilitate capital accumulation by maintaining the existing power relations embedded in the capitalist political economy, which shapes the interests and behaviors of treadmill actors (Lynch et al., 2020; Stretesky et al., 2013). Therefore, to understand the environmental and social harms generated by industrial animal agriculture in rural China, it is crucial to examine how the political-economic organizations in the centralized regime have structured the formulation and enforcement of environmental regulations.

Environmental Regulation and Enforcement in China: A Brief Overview

Since the 2000s, the Chinese central government has promulgated hundreds of national laws and regulations to control rampant environmental pollution and natural resources depletion caused by the rapid expansion of its economy. Nevertheless, the lack of local-level state capacity and the fragmented structure of environmental governance have greatly constrained the effectiveness of these regulations in China (Kostka, 2016, 2017; Ran, 2017; van Rooij et al., 2017). China’s environmental regulations often lack precise measurements and standardized implementation procedures to deliver consistent enforcement outcomes. Barriers embedded within governing institutions often led to the promotion of economic growth over environmental protection, hindering interagency collaboration and undermining enforcement capacity. Moreover, local regulators lack political influence to enforce compliance against the central and provincial government-owned industries as state-owned enterprises have higher administrative ranks than prefectural and county governments (Eaton & Kostka, 2017). Regulation deficiencies eventually resulted in conflicts of interest among different levels of governance causing local regulators to prioritize economic development over environmental protection (Ran, 2017).

The Chinese central government adopted restrictive environmental targets to address the implementation gap of environmental regulations, tighten control over lower administrative units, and improve policy outcomes (Kostka, 2017). The restrictive targets were linked to the annual evaluations of state bureaucrats and the amount of fiscal transfer payments allotted to local governments (van Rooij et al., 2017). Nevertheless, reliance on quantitative targets to assess regulation enforcement has led to widespread manipulation of statistics, and the political pressure to achieve short-term policy outcomes has undermined the long-term sustainability of environmental institutions (Eaton & Kostka, 2014; Kostka, 2016; Mao & Zhang, 2018; Ran, 2017). Concurrent with the development of the top-down, direct-command approach of environmental governance, the Chinese central government has gradually expanded the regulatory landscape to allow participation from stakeholders outside of the bureaucracy. The 2015 Environmental Law of China stipulated mandatory environmental assessment for new construction projects and public environmental information disclosure by state enterprises and public institutions. Recently promulgated environmental regulations include economic policies, legal instruments, and incentives for self-regulation to improve compliance and accountability (Kostka, 2017). Nevertheless, the “decentering of regulation” in China has been constrained by an ambivalence to nonstate actors’ involvement in environmental governance as the public’s discontent over environmental issues may threaten social stability and challenge the political legitimacy of the developmental state (van Rooij et al., 2016). To maintain legitimacy and improve oversight, the Chinese central government launched the Central Environmental Protection Inspectorate (zhong yang huan bao du cha zu) in 2016 to verify the environmental protection records of every provincial and regional government in China. Although inspection teams have sanctioned tens of thousands of bureaucrats failing to enforce environmental regulations adequately, research has found that the severity of sanctions varies greatly depending on the bureaucrats’ relative positions within the bureaucracy. State agents ranking above the county and prefectural administrative level receive less-severe disciplinary actions than those who rank below, and most punishments were nonlegal sanctions related to personnel management within the party hierarchy (C. Y. Hu & Liu, 2019).

The lack of legal sanctions and/or criminal prosecutions against the state’s negligence reflects the underdevelopment of environmental legislation and courts in China. The Chinese Constitution and, subsequently, the judicial system fails to recognize the environmental rights of individual citizens or to clearly define what constitutes public environmental interests, creating severe barriers to the evaluation and regulation of environmental risks (Wu, 2018). In response, the central government has recently imposed extreme enforcement measures and uniform restrictions against regulated entities to ensure local enforcement outcomes. This “blunt-force regulation” approach simplifies regulation enforcement to periodic political campaigns, reducing “the numbers of steps and actors required producing a regulatory outcome” and eliminating the principal-agent conundrum in the policy implementation process (van der Kamp, 2019). This fragmented and ambiguous legal landscape in environmental governance has important implications for the regulation of animal husbandry throughout China.

Pre-2014 Environmental Animal Husbandry Regulations in China

The Chinese central government first promulgated environmental guidelines to ameliorate pollution caused by industrial animal agriculture in 2001 when the former State Environmental Protection Administration of China¹ released the Administrative Measures for the Prevention and Control of Pollution from Large-scale Breeding of Livestock and Poultry as well as two related technical standards. In 2002, the Agriculture Law of the PRC stipulated that operators of intensive livestock farms should reduce the environmental impacts of husbandry operations and promote comprehensive utilization of manure, wastewater, and agricultural wastes. Later, the 2005 Stockbreeding Law of the PRC and the 2008 Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution mandated husbandry farms to have treatment facilities and compensate for damages created by untreated waste. In 2010 and 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture² (MOA) released two guidelines promoting the standardization of husbandry operations and the reduction of environmental impacts from industrial animal agriculture. In its 12th Five-year Plan promoting agricultural technology, the MOA stated that the comprehensive utilization rate of husbandry manure should exceed 60% by the end of 2015. Nevertheless, these national guidelines and regulations failed to clearly specify legal sanctions for violations and provide uniform implementation procedures. During this period, only five Chinese provinces released provincial implementation guidelines and standards to supplement national regulations. Consequently, the environmental regulations promulgated before 2014 had limited effects on the prevention of environmental harm caused by the husbandry sector.

The ineffectiveness of the pre-2014 regulations can be attributed to the complex and contradictory regulatory landscape of rural development in China. Before the 2000s, national development policies arbitrarily extracted surplus value from rural communities to subsidize industrial development in urban areas, creating low agricultural productivity growth, concentrated poverty, and severe environmental degradation in China’s rural hinterland (Chen et al., 2017; Mao & Hanley, 2018). To address these issues and maintain political legitimacy, the Chinese central government drafted a series of national policies to simultaneously promote capital accumulation and ecological restoration in the countryside (Bluemling, 2017; Chen et al., 2017; Schneider, 2017). This led to the rationalization of the rural landscape and, as a result, spatial concentration and functional intensification in agricultural production became the dominant logic in the governance of the “New Socialist Countryside” (Chen et al., 2017). In the husbandry sector, this encouraged the vertical integration of the value chain through “dragon-head enterprises” (agro-industrial firms) and tied the expansion of CAFOs to the annual evaluation merits of state agents working in the agricultural and rural development administration. For instance, the 2009 end-of-year report of the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau at Shou county of Anhui province stated that the Bureau raised the efficiency of husbandry operations and farmers’ incomes by promoting “standardized, professional husbandry production with technological investment and support.” The Bureau channeled most of its budget to promote the construction and expansion of CAFOs because they served as the “propeller to accelerate the development of industrial animal agriculture.” State agents working in the Bureau were instructed to utilize “every means possible” to attract outside capital and support policies and subsidies from national and provincial governments to expand the scale of production (Shou County Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau, 2009). During this period, rural county governments also organized larger household husbandry producers into cooperatives to reduce operating costs related to feed procurement, distribution, financing, and technological investment. The horizontal consolidation of smaller husbandry operations served as the foundation to attract agro-business firms that provided more than half the total tax revenue in some rural counties (Shuangcheng Prefecture Government, 2003). As such, local governments across China became entangled in competition with each other to attract agro-industrial capital and expand their tax bases. The state-corporatist development model utilized favorable bank loans, infrastructure investment, and construction of specialized industrial farming zones to increase the scale of husbandry production, and local environmental protection and animal husbandry bureaus were often pressured to under-enforce environmental regulations (Bluemling, 2017; Mao, 2018; van Rooij et al., 2017). Promoting spatial concentration and functional intensification subsequently led to the dispossession of land and water resources and turned rural communities into a sink for externalities generated by industrial animal agriculture (Schneider, 2015, 2017). According to Zhou and Qing (2017), from 1998 to 2012, industrial animal agriculture contributed 87.65% to the national growth in pig manure output and 84.29% to the increase in the cropland pollution load. The southern and coastal regions of China faced the highest exposure to water and land pollution from industrial animal agriculture.

To address agricultural environmental pollution, the Chinese central government adopted a new approach to rural development in its 12th and 13th Five-Year Plan that utilized the quantification of ecological capacity data to establish zones for different types of agricultural production. These plans advocated technological investment and market-based mechanisms to improve resource and waste recycling in agricultural production and reduce chemical fertilizer and pesticide use (Bluemling, 2017; MOA, 2015). The 2014 Regulation followed the same regulatory logics of the national rural development plans to improve the control of husbandry pollution. The Regulation stipulated that subnational governments should consider the ecological carrying capacity and the efficiency of husbandry operations before setting the scale and the total quantity of animal husbandry in a given region. It banned the construction of livestock and poultry farms in areas deemed ecologically fragile and required environmental impact assessments for any construction, rebuilding, and expansion of husbandry farms. Moreover, the Regulation viewed the “comprehensive utilization and treatment” of manure as the most effective approach to prevent pollution. As such, subnational governments promulgated supplementary regulations supporting the expansion of biogas facilities and the utilization of treated husbandry wastes as organic fertilizer. Subsequently, the 2014 Regulation set multiple economic incentives for utilizing treated husbandry waste, granting subsidies and preferential pricing toward the development of the organic fertilizer industry. Most importantly, the 2014 Regulation was the first Chinese law to specify legal sanctions against environmental pollution caused by agricultural activities. Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) at the county level or above now had the legal authority to stop the construction of husbandry facilities in ecological fragile areas and to impose fines ranging from 30,000 yuan to 100,000 RMB. In addition, county governments were granted the legal authority to close husbandry operations and demolish facilities deemed to be in violation of the provincial husbandry development plans. The 2014 Regulation and the subsequent national and provincial implementation guidelines represent the Chinese central government’s attempt to resolve the conflicts generated by the contradictory drives to accelerate capital accumulation and reduce environmental pollution in China’s rural landscape.

The Ambiguous Post-2014 Regulatory Landscape

The 2014 Regulation is a part of a national policy drive designed by central ministries to promote sustainable rural development by reducing water, chemical fertilizer, and pesticide inputs in agricultural production and establish a resource utilization system for husbandry waste, crop straws, and recycled PVC film (MOA, 2015). Like other environmental and agricultural development policies from this period, the 2014 Regulation incorporated quantification and ecological zoning into the regulatory measures and expected regulatory outcomes. To fulfill policy goals, the Chinese central government mandated restrictive environmental targets and used their completion as evaluation criteria for cadre performance and for the transfer of earmarked funding to local governments. However, the directives issued by different central ministries were poorly coordinated and set contradicting regulatory expectations. For instance, the MOA stated in its 2015 Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Agriculture on Conducting Campaign of Non-point Pollution Control that the goal of the 2014 Regulation was to ensure the construction of waste treatment facilities for “over 75% of the large-scale husbandry farms by 2020.” The Chinese State Council also outlined the same benchmark in the 2016 National Soil Pollution Prevention Action Plan. Yet, the 2015 to 2030 National Sustainable Agricultural Development Plan, jointly formulated by eight central government ministries and commissions, stated the expected outcomes of husbandry waste control regulations as “the comprehensive utilization rate of husbandry waste in China will exceed 75%.” Despite the confusion, the State Council still elevated the 75% comprehensive utilization rate of husbandry waste from an expected outcome to a national restrictive environmental target to be achieved by 2020. It was not until 2 years later that the State Council of China (2017) addressed the conflicting benchmarks, setting the 2020 national comprehensive utilization of husbandry wastes target to 75% and mandating the construction of waste treatment facilities for 95% of larger-scale husbandry farms by 2020.

Since 2014, the Chinese central government has promulgated or updated eight national laws concerning husbandry waste pollution, but these laws define husbandry waste and production scale differently and, as a result, mandate contradictory implementation mechanisms. For instance, Article 13 of the 2014 Regulation states that processed manure should be treated as renewable resources that can be re-utilized in agricultural production rather than as environmental pollutants. As such, the 2014 Regulation stipulates that large-scale producers do not need to construct treatment facilities if they outsource the management of husbandry wastes to licensed third-party entities. Similarly, Article 4 of the 2018 Environmental Protection Tax Law stipulates that large-scale husbandry producers be exempted from environmental taxes so long as they discharge husbandry wastes to “centralized sewage and domestic waste treatment facilities” or “places that meet the national and local standards for environmental protection.” In addition, Article 4 allows each province to set the standards by which a husbandry operation is defined as “large-scale.” In sum, Article 13 of the 2014 regulation and Article 4 of the 2018 Environmental Protection Tax Law are in direct conflict with the 1996 and 2018 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law that define all husbandry wastes as pollutants and requires all farms, regardless of their scales of production, to obtain discharge permits. Neither the 2014 Regulation nor the 2018 Environmental Protection Tax Law view processed manure as environmental pollutants or set any legal instruments to regulate farms not categorized as “large-scale producers.” The fragmentation of policy formulation among central government ministries became barriers to regulation enforcement per the original intent of the regulations for grassroots regulators. All county environmental protection regulators we interviewed in 2016 and 2017 used the outdated water pollution prevention and control guidelines issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) and asserted that they had to regulate processed husbandry wastes as industrial pollutants because the waste treatment facilities of large-scaled husbandry farms had discharge outlets. Correspondingly, husbandry operators we interviewed had to circumvent the MEP regulations by hiring sewage trucks to transport the processed manure (organic fertilizer) to farmers even though they strictly adhered to the MOA guidelines (Interview #12–19). The inconsistencies between regulatory categories profoundly increased the costs of resource utilization, negated the effects of market-based policy instruments, and created economic incentives for the illegal dumping of husbandry waste.

Moreover, the ambiguous regulatory landscape delegated enforcement authority to multiple agencies, producing incongruous legal sanctions against polluters. For example, Article 49 of the 2015 Environmental Protection Law requires all husbandry operations to treat animal waste effectively to prevent pollution but does not specify any legal authorities to exert sanctions for noncompliance. Article 71 of the 2016 Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste states that large-scale husbandry operators can be fined for up to 50,000 RMB by environmental protection agents for any environmental damages caused by improperly stored animal wastes. Nonetheless, the 2016 law does not have sanctions against small-scale producers and fails to clearly define what constitutes “environmental damages.” Article 83 of the 2018 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law stipulates that county environmental protection bureaus can issue fines between a 100,000 to 1 million RMB for any unlicensed wastewater discharge, an amount significantly different from that stipulated in the 2014 Regulation and the 2016 Water Law. Moreover, Article 58 of the 2018 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law allows the discharge of untreated husbandry and agricultural processing wastes to irrigation canals if the water quality at the first downstream monitoring station meets the standards for farm-use. Simultaneously, Article 84 of the same law delegates the regulation and construction of waste discharge outlets near rivers and lakes to county water resource bureaus or river basin organizations instead of county environmental protection bureaus, thereby generating jurisdictional conflicts between different regulatory agencies. In fact, the current regulatory regime for the construction and operation of husbandry farms requires enforcement from eight separate county-level agencies as well as cooperation from township governments and administrative village committees. The ambiguity of enforcement responsibilities diffuses compulsory authority and prevents collaboration among different agencies. As expressed by a township secretary, “[to regulate husbandry farms], our county government organizes all relevant bureaus to participate in short-term crack-downs (lianhe zhifa), which turns regulation into intermittent political mobilization (yun dong)” (Interview # 23).

Blunt-Force Enforcement in Husbandry Forbidden Zones

While the regulation of animal husbandry in China is characterized by conflicting legal standards and enforcement gaps, ecological zoning requirements in the post-2014 regulatory regime have disproportionately affected small-scale farmers. The 2014 Regulation mandated that “scaled” husbandry operations are forbidden in drinking water source areas, natural conservation regions, urban residential zones as well as near tourist, cultural, and educational parks. In 2015, the State Council of China released the Action Plan for Prevention and Treatment of Water Pollution, which expanded the removal categories to include medium-scale “specialized household husbandry farms” (zhuanyehua jiatingshi yang zhichang). The 2015 action plan also requires local governments in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Metropolitan Region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta to remove “scaled” husbandry operations from forbidden land-use zones before the end of 2016 and set the end of 2017 as the deadline for the rest of China. The 2016 MOA National Plan for the Development of Hog Industry categorized eight southern provinces as well as Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai as “restrictive growth” zones (yueshu fazhan qu) for industrialized pig farming based on provincial data on breeding stock and ecological carrying capacity. The national plan mandated that industrialized animal agriculture in restrictive growth zones be significantly reduced with most of the productivity relocated to the “potential growth” zone (qianli zengzhang qu) located in northeastern and southwestern China. This decision has fundamentally reshaped meat production in China as these 11 provinces and municipalities accounted for 75.9% of the total national pork output in 2014.

To improve the effectiveness of these national directives, the Chinese central government elevated the removal of pig farms to a restrictive environmental target and mandated that heads of county and prefectural environmental protection bureaus be appointed by higher-level governments to avoid interference from local bureaucracy. Furthermore, the Chinese central government dispatched Central Environmental Protection Inspectorate teams to ensure timely target fulfillment. The head of each province and prefecture would be removed or have their promotion vetoed if they fail to achieve the projected regulatory outcomes. These top-down implementation measures propelled subnational governments to impose extreme environmental social control on regulated entities and local bureaucrats, causing the over-enforcement of husbandry waste and water pollution regulations. For instance, Article 43 of the 2014 Regulation delegates the definition of “scaled husbandry operations” to provincial governments, creating disparate enforcement standards, and outcome appraisal mechanisms across China. At the same time, the 2016 Technical Guidance for Designation of Forbidden Areas for Livestock Breeding, jointly released by the MOA and MEP, delegates the demarcation of forbidden areas for “scaled” husbandry operations to county-level governments. Since the evaluation of regulatory effectiveness was tied to the completion of quantitative targets (total discharge of pollutants) and the removal of husbandry farms from forbidden zones, subnational governments were incentivized to impose more stringent enforcement measures to achieve political merits than that specified in the national regulations. As stated by Heilong Jiang province’s official guideline for the removal of husbandry operation from forbidden zones,

the criteria proposed by the central government guideline should be considered as the minimum requirement, county-level governments should reasonably adjust the demarcation based on the ecological capacity of each region and the standards set by this technical guide (emphasis added) (Heilongjiang Provincial People’s Government, 2016).

The political pressure to complete the restrictive environmental targets soon turned the governance of husbandry waste into top-down political campaigns that disregarded the original intent and design of the national regulations. A county official stated in 2017,

The central government’s attention of environmental issues has made regulation enforcement the most important political task (zhengzhi renwu) for local governments. Since [enforcement] has become a political task, every agency involved needs to complete the assigned quota resolutely as any markdown in the outcomes would be perceived as a disciplinary (jilv) issue, resulting in severe and arbitrary party sanctions against everyone in the chain of enforcement. Given the consequences, we will always accomplish the targets (da biao) regardless the costs and community backlash incurred. (Interview #7)

As such, county regulators and township officials we interviewed often interpreted the national directives as an order to eliminate all husbandry operations from their jurisdictions. The complete ban contradicted the 2014 Regulation and related national plans for pollution prevention and agricultural development, as these policies allowed husbandry farms that fell under provincial definitions of “scaled operation” to operate in forbidden zones. The national policies also allowed the existence of large-scale husbandry farms in restricted areas so long as the discharge from processed manure has COD content lower than 150 mg/L and ammonia nitrogen content lower than 40 mg/L. Nonetheless, the complete ban approach was attractive to grassroots state agents as it simplified policy implementation and ensured target fulfillment. As expressed by a township secretary:

We enforced the ban regardless of the size or production methods of these operations because we did not have the necessary administrative resources to monitor every sewage discharge. If we allow some farms to operate but not others, those who had their facilities demolished would protest or petition to the higher authorities. A one-size-fits-all (yi dao qie) approach was the most effective enforcement method, especially given that the head of the county and prefectural governments all signed disciplinary pledges (jun lin zhuang) [to complete the restrictive targets before the end of 2017]. (Interview #9)

As the political campaign intensified, the focus of regulation enforcement at the subprovincial level switched from the promotion of resource utilization of husbandry waste to the complete elimination of small-scale husbandry farms. For example, the deputy party secretary of Yuanhui District in Henan province stated in 2018:

… the pollution caused by small-scale husbandry operation is the foremost priority of our enforcement campaign. We will strictly follow the principle of removing small-scale husbandry from household backyards and villages-based farms and, instead, will push for the expansion of large-scale, cooperative, and market-based operations. The campaign against small-scale polluters must be advanced in every township and village. (Yuanhui District People’s Government, 2018)

Historically, small-scale “backyard” pig farms tend to produce less pollutants than large-scale operations, as most of the animal wastes generated can be applied to household croplands as organic fertilizers (Chadwick et al., 2015). Nevertheless, the limited scale of backyard and specialized household husbandry farms makes it hard to convert reutilization results into measurable quantified targets. As such, none of the post-2014 national regulations set any waste treatment standards for small-scale pig farms. Given that small-scale husbandry operations do not generate tax revenue for local governments and that the 2015 Action Plan for the Prevention and Treatment of Water Pollution mandated local governments in “areas with high-density of small-scale husbandry” establish waste collection schemes and build centralized treatment facilities, local governments were incentivized to view small-scale pig farms as an administrative liability. The gaps in national specifications provided justification to impose complete bans that helped local regulators bypass the inconsistencies and complexities embedded in the ambiguous regulatory landscape.

From 2015 to 2017, the top-down campaign to ban pig husbandry farms to reduce water pollution led to the establishment of 90,000 forbidden zones “covering a land area of 0.82 million km² and shutting down 0.26 million [large-scaled] pig farms” (Bai et al., 2019). The impact of the political campaign on small-scale pig farms has been devastating. In Henan province alone, more than 980,000 backyard and specialized household farms were demolished by 2018 (P. Li, 2019).¹ The implementation of post-2014 regulations caused significant disruption to pork production in China as the number of slaughtered pigs decreased by 46 million head per year between 2014 and 2017 (Bai et al., 2019). Moreover, “blunt-force” enforcement practices have led to widespread injustice against small-scale husbandry farmers whose farms, previously approved by local governments and legal according to national regulations, were arbitrarily demolished without due process or proper compensation. Given that most of the small-scale pig farms were owned by people who had few resources to shoulder economic uncertainty, the political campaign to shut down small-scale producers has generated profound social discontent and destabilized farming communities. The Chinese central government repeatedly issued statements against the “one-size-fits-all” enforcement practices in 2016 and 2018, but these nonbinding guiding opinions had little effect on grassroots state agents who were constrained by the top-down implementation model.

The Relocation of Scaled-up Production and the Transference of Environmental Harm

To understand why the top-down implementation model began to target small-scale husbandry producers, it is essential to note that one of the expected regulatory outcomes of the 2014 Regulation was to overhaul pork production in China by consolidating backyard and specialized household farms into CAFO operations. Since 2007, the Chinese central government has provided an annual subsidy of 2.5 billion RMB (353.02 million USD) to improve the “quality and efficiency” (ti zhi zeng xiao) of meat production through the construction of scaled-up (gui mou hua) and standardized (biao zhun hua) facilities (MOA, 2014). In the post-2014 regulatory landscape, husbandry waste treatment benchmarks were used to accelerate the realization of a capital-intensive, “scientifically-based” husbandry (ke xue yangzhi) sector. For instance, the 2017 Guiding Opinion of Improving Pig Husbandry Development in Southern Watershed Area specifically stated that the purpose of zoning-based agricultural and environmental protection policies is to “improve the scientific levels of husbandry, promote the standardization and scaling-up of pig farms, and support the renovation of scale-up operations to enhance the technology used in pig husbandry and waste treatment” (MOA, 2017). The MOA guiding opinion also promoted land consolidation by large-scale husbandry operators so that processed manure could be applied as organic fertilizers. Most importantly, the directive guided subnational governments to establish subsidy regimes that “incentivize the involvement of non-state investment (shehui ziben) to improve environmental protection outcomes, expand the overall scales of production in ‘pig-exporting counties’ (shengzhu diaochuxian), and fulfill the standardization of the husbandry sector.” In other words, the Chinese government viewed the capitalization, concentration, and intensification of industrial animal agriculture as the solution to the environmental, pork supply, and food safety issues generated by meat production in China. Consequently, millions of small-scale pig farmers became hurdles to the consolidation of the husbandry sector and the realization of state-led rural development goals. By arbitrarily removing small-scale husbandry and mandating that at least 40% of the fixed-asset investment of new husbandry farms should be related to waste treatment facilities, the Chinese central government effectively increased the entrance barrier to husbandry so that meat production could become vertically integrated and horizontally consolidated into a few agroindustry conglomerates (Securities Times, 2017). As asserted by an official report from Wulong District in Chongqing Municipality,

The development of industrial husbandry and environmental protection were equally important in the implementation of the national environmental regulations, which will force the transformation and upgrading of the entire sector, accelerate the construction of modern agricultural parks that combine crop and husbandry production, and advance the resource utilization of husbandry wastes. (B. C. Li, 2018)

As the political campaigns to remove small-scale husbandry farms intensified across China in 2016 and 2017, major agroindustry conglomerates drastically increased their capital investment and production scale. From January to August 2017, the top eight husbandry corporations in China invested a combined 99.8 billion RMB (14.13 billion USD) into the construction of factory farms, increasing inventory by 63.4 million heads to an annual output of 220 million heads (Zhujiage Wang, 2017). The rapid expansion of CAFOs primarily occurred in rural counties in China’s northeastern provinces, which the Chinese central government designated as a major growth zone for pig husbandry due to the availability of consolidated cropland, mass production of corn as feed, and low cost of labor. Adhering to the 2016 MOA National Plan for the Development of Hog Industry, subnational governments in the region started to treat industrialized animal agriculture as a major source of economic growth and promulgated favorable policies to attract investment from major agroindustry capital. For example, Heilongjiang province stated in 2016 that “by 2020, the husbandry sector must contribute to more than 50% of agricultural-related GDP and more than 5% of the total GDP of the province” (Y. Hu et al., 2019). To achieve that benchmark, the province would provide a 3.6 billion RMB subsidy from 2016 to 2019 to attract major husbandry operators to relocate their productivity from southern provinces (Y. Hu et al., 2019).

The “pig relocation” policies directly led Chinese agroindustry conglomerates to establish hundreds of factory farms with capacities ranging from 3,000 to 2 million heads in Heilongjiang province. Neighboring provinces soon released similar fiscal incentives to attract nonstate capital. In 2016, 59% of the total fixed investment in China’s husbandry sector was directed to northern provinces categorized as pig industry “potential growth” zones by the Chinese central government (Securities Times, 2017). Since most newly built factory farms were located in rural counties near urban areas or along major thoroughfares, the concentrated husbandry wastes soon surpassed the ecological capacity of areas surrounding these farms. Yet, regulators at the county and prefectural level often chose not to enforce existing regulations, as the national plan only set discharge and ecological capacity benchmarks at the provincial level (Y. Hu et al., 2019). Worse, the waste treatment facilities of these factory farms were often under-utilized due to the lack of economic incentives, resulting in significant surface water, soil, air, and groundwater pollution in rural communities (Bai et al., 2019). The post-2014 regulatory landscape directly contributed to the transference of environmental and social harm from more economically developed southern and coastal regions to rural counties in northeastern China. The geographical concentration and functional intensification of the husbandry sector became major threats to public health, water supply, and biosecurity risks, which eventually contributed to the sudden decline of China’s pork production in 2019.

African Swine Fever and Resultant Changes in National Policies

In August 2018, China reported the first African swine fever (ASF) outbreak in Liaoning, a northeastern province designated as a “potential growth” zone for pig husbandry in 2016 (Table 1). Within 7 months, the outbreak reached every province in China, wiping out an estimated 100 million pigs and reducing China’s pork production by at least 33% (He, 2019). It was reported that illegally imported pork products and the long-distance, cross-province transportation of live pigs contributed to the rapid spreading of the pandemic, which was indirectly related to price incentives generated by the post-2014 regulatory regime (Bai et al., 2019; Shao et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2019). Combined with the effects of the “blunt-force” enforcement of environmental regulations, the outbreak has reduced the sow inventory in China by 31.9% and increased the national price of pork by 46.7% from July 2018 to July 2019 (China Gov Net, 2019). Pork price increases became a major source of inflation and threatened social stability in China (State Council of China, 2019).

Table 1.

Chinese Central Government Policies to Promote Hog Production Released August to September 2019.

Policy announcement	Promulgated by	Summary
The Chinese State Council Executive Meetings Minutes	General Office of the State Council	Create a comprehensive policy to restore pig production that cancels the prohibition, limits pig breeding beyond regulations, promotes scale-up pig production, provides farmer support, supports an animal epidemic prevention system, and secures the pork supply
Ministry of Commerce Press Release	Ministry of Commerce	Increase meat supply by releasing reserved frozen pork, beef, and mutton. Guide production and sales territories to establish a stable cooperative relationship of purchase and sales, promote inter-regional production and marketing, and smooth meat supply pathways. Stimulate the expansion of pork imports through market principles
Notification for recovering and implementing the “Green Pathway” policy for fresh agricultural products transportation	Ministry of Transportation & Ministry of Agriculture	Implement the “Green Pathway” policy for the transport of fresh agricultural products; can also be applied to legal piglets and frozen pork beginning September 1, 2019. Vehicles transporting legal pigs and frozen pork will be exempted from road tolls from September 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020
Notification for demarcating husbandry forbidden zones to encourage expansion of hog production	Ministry of Ecology and Environment & Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs	Scientifically delineate legal boundaries of no-breeding zones. Investigate the demarcation of no-breeding zones and rectify related activities violating regulations. Accelerate the ecological impact evaluation and approval process for animal breeding projects meeting environmental protection requirements. Increase policy support for rectification and adjustment of no-breeding zones; if animal production sites/households must be closed, provide reasonable transition periods. End simplified approach requiring the direct “shut down” of animal breeding and production sites
Notification for supporting and stabilizing pig production and pork marketing supply	Ministry of Finance & Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs	Discount Loans: The implementation period of loans with discounted interest for pig breeding sites and scaled pig production will be extended to December 31, 2020, during which funds will be provided to support new construction, reconstruction, and the expansion of sites who meet the regulatory requirements. Insurance: Temporarily increase insurance coverage for sows from 1000–1200 yuan to 1,500 yuan from May 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020; raise coverage for piglets and fattening pigs from 500–600 yuan to 800 yuan. Subsidy: Adjust subsidy for mandatory culling caused by African swine fever from the annual settlement to semiannual settlement. Reward: Increase cash rewards for counties who take a major role in large-scale pig production and pork output
Notification for supporting and protecting the land for pig breeding and pork production	Ministry of Natural Resources	Manage pig breeding land according to the regulatory requirements for agricultural land; cultivated agricultural land may be used for pig production. Increase land scale for auxiliary facilities and cancel the 15-mu land limitation. Encourage land use at barren mountains, gullies, hills, beach/bottomland, and rural collective construction sites for pig breeding and production
Notification for increasing subsidy to support the development of pig breeding and production	Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs	In principle, the purchase of all kinds of agricultural machinery items used for pig production should be subsidized by the provinces across the nation, “make up what is missing” “for emergency treatment”
Notification for supporting and stabilizing pig production and pork marketing supply	China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission	Loans: Related institutions should not limit, reduce, or stop providing loans to credit-worthy local pig breeding farms or large-scale pig producing, slaughtering, and processing factories who temporarily encounter operational difficulties Mortgages: Launch pilot project in Chongqing and Liaoning, Henan, Guangdong provinces to support territories fulfilling requirements for pig production; release funds for mortgage, registration and circulation
Opinion from the General Office of the State Council to stabilize, reform, and upgrade pig production	General Office of the State Council	Development goals: By 2020, the pork self-sufficiency rate should be near 95%, scale-up pig breeding/pork production should reach 58%, animal waste/manure comprehensive utilization rate should exceed 78%. By 2025, scale-up pig breeding should reach 65%, animal waste/manure comprehensive utilization rate should exceed 85%. Provinces take the responsibility
Notification for budgeting central government’s investment on stabilizing pig production	National Development and Reform Commission & Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs	Animal waste utilization: In 2020, launch pollution treatment project for livestock waste by selecting 100 counties whose pillar industry is not animal husbandry but have a stock of more than 100,000 pigs. Construction subsidy: Provide a one-time subsidy between 500,000 and 5 million Yuan, not to exceed 30% of the total project investment, to newly built, relocated, and expanded pig breeding farms, scale-up pig farms (household), large-scale farms (household) located in no-breeding zones and constructed by the end of 2020

In response, the State Council of China and other central ministries released 19 new national policies in September 2019 to stabilize pork production. These policies drastically de-emphasized environmental protection and became a new top-down political campaign to increase pork output. The Chinese central government required each province to achieve self-sustenance in pork supply, incorporated price controls on pork into the job evaluations of prefectural heads and ordered subnational governments to provide subsidies and loan-assistance to large-scale husbandry operators. The new directives also lowered the benchmark for the comprehensive utilization rate of “scaled” operations to 78% by 2022 and 85% by 2025 and ordered county-level governments to allocate land to rebuild small and medium-sized pig farms demolished by the 2016-2018 “complete ban” campaign. The new directive from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) specifically stated that “governments at all levels should not expand the demarcation of ‘forbidden zones for husbandry’ and cannot use environmental protection as an excuse to illegally constrain the development of pig husbandry and reduce pork production” and “to resolve the issue of illegal designation by the local governments, the Ministry will strengthen its monitoring of the overexpansion of ‘forbidden zones’ and will initiate crack-downs at appropriate times (emphasis added).” The Ministry of Natural Resources also ordered all prefectural and county land resources bureaus to simplify environmental assessment procedures for the construction of pig farms, remove the land-use cap of husbandry facilities, and support expansion of pig farms on “waste land” or “rural collective construction land” because “protecting land for pig husbandry is the most crucial assignment for land governance (emphasis added)” (Ministry of Natural Resources, 2019). Perplexingly, the new national policies still promoted geographical concentration and functional intensification of pig husbandry even though widely reported biosecurity and public health uncertainties are related to CAFOs. Consequently, the new political campaign to increase pork production and reduce regulation enforcement may lead to increased environmental pollution and worsen the existing transference of environmental harm to China’s rural hinterland.

Discussion

China’s post-2014 husbandry waste policies demonstrate the complex and often contradictory approaches to alleviate brown crime generated by the expansion of meat production. The Chinese central government has instituted environmental targets, arbitrary disciplinary mechanisms, and environmental inspection teams to enhance oversight and accountability. Concurrently, the post-2014 regulations provided state subsidies and market-based mechanisms to incentivize the self-regulation of nonstate actors, improve compliance, and reduce enforcement costs. The juxtaposing centralizing and decentering tendencies of recent environmental regulations in China demonstrate the pre-eminence of the party-state in the development of a regulatory regime working to achieve contradictory economic and environmental objectives. Nevertheless, the implementation of the 2014 Regulation and related national directives caused major disruptions to China’s husbandry sector, significant increases in biosecurity and public health risks, widespread dispossession of small-scale husbandry farmers, and mass transference of environmental harm. The precipitous reduction in national pork output and the subsequent upsurge of consumer goods index in China were unintended consequences of the post-2014 regulatory regime, but they nonetheless propelled the Chinese central government to return to a productivist logic prioritizing the expansion of the meat regime over environmental concerns. Subsequently, the enforcement of husbandry waste regulations resembled state-led agro-industrialization and structural adjustment initiatives designed to accelerate capital accumulation in the husbandry sector in China.

The enforcement of husbandry waste regulations has not only promoted geographical concentration and functional intensification of industrial animal agriculture in China but also recast rural landscapes, as rural communities and the administrative apparatus were both conditioned by the governmentality embedded in the top-down implementation model. The post-2014 regulatory regime symbolizes the Chinese central government’s reliance on rationalization to reduce implementation deficits, seen in the “development and disciplinary practices” (Yeh, 2013 as cited in Chen et al., 2017) that rely on ecological zoning and the quantification of ecological additions and withdrawals for the scientific evaluation of environmental and economic risks, subsequently, indicating an application of the “precautionary principle” to the governance of uncertainty. The state’s fervent promotion of standardization and integration in the husbandry sector also reflects its belief that rationalization in production reduces uncertainty in rural development and environmental governance.

Nevertheless, the actual implementation of the post-2014 regulations soon devolved into “precautionary logic” advocating preemptive action against potential security threats before transgressions occurred (Brisman, 2017). The “precautionary logic” reflected the administrative apparatus’ arbitrary, and, in some cases, illegal actions to remove any regulated entity that may hinder the completion of environmental targets regardless of the original intent of the regulations. As elucidated by Brisman (2017), the tension between the precautionary principle and the precautionary logic in western liberal societies often lies in “the disagreement over degrees of state intervention” in the regulation of market and public security (p. 318). In the Chinese context, the pre-eminence of the state in the regulatory landscape fundamentally shapes this tension, as the central government struggles to balance economic and environmental imperatives amid profound regional variations in ecology, culture, and levels of economic development. The contradictory goals of rural development and environmental protection created fragmentation and uncoordinated policy formulation at the central level, which, in turn, generated ambiguity and inconsistency in policy implementation at the local level. As a result, local state agents resorted to “blunt-force” enforcement practices, removing uncertainty that threatened the material interests of the bureaucracy, leading to the transference of environmental harm and manifesting as green victimization. On one hand, the “complete ban” on husbandry in “restrictive growth” regions generated collateral economic and social impacts to small-scale pig farmers who were often the most economically disadvantaged group in rural China. On the other hand, the disproportional placement and rapid expansion of CAFOs in “potential growth” regions may lead to ecological disorganization and the exploitation of the unskilled and nonmigrating “left-over” population, thereby exacerbating regional disparities and rural–urban stratification (Stretesky et al., 2003). Moreover, the geographical concentration and functional intensification of pork production eventually contributed to the spread of the ASF pandemic, which decimated the pig husbandry sector and resulted in social disorganization across rural China. In sum, the post-2014 regulatory regime, while achieving projected regulatory outcomes, inadvertently resulted in the increase of brown crime, social injustice for some of the least powerful in the Chinese population, disrupted the national supply of pork, and transferred environmental harms to underdeveloped regions.

To note, the green victimization discussed above was not due solely to “blunt-force” enforcement by grassroots state agents. Understanding the origins of the ecological and social disorganization requires examining the regulatory regime as a “treadmill of law” that exists to “maintain the economic and social relations that legitimize and replicate ToP practices … ” (Lynch et al., 2020, p. 3). The post-2014 regulatory regime for husbandry waste intentionally excluded small-scale farmers and promoted scaled-up and standardized husbandry operations. Accordingly, the environmental regulations supported the expansion of CAFOs while exacerbating existing regional stratification and ecologically unequal exchanges by designating rural hinterland in northeastern regions as the new “black site” for industrial animal agriculture (McClanahan & Linnemann, 2018). The “pig relocation” policies and the stringent environmental targets in “restrictive growth” regions allowed the state to maintain legitimacy without constraining the ToP. At the same time, in the “potential growth” regions, provincial and prefectural governments utilized the top-down implementation of environmental policies to promote the expansion of CAFOs, and rural communities became the “path of least resistance” for state authorities to generate tax revenue through agro-industrialization (Greife & Stretesky, 2013; Stretesky et al., 2003). In fact, the contradictory objectives, conflicting benchmarks, and inconsistent standards set by different central ministries demonstrate the shifting alliance of bureaucratic and corporate interests within the administrative apparatus, which reinforces the dominant political-economic organization of state-led rural development. As such, the post-2014 environmental, food safety, and rural development policies invariably categorized small-scale husbandry farming as undesirable and set up subsidy regimes to entice nonstate capital to expand industrial animal agriculture. The control and prevention of husbandry waste pollution subsequently became justifiable causes to arbitrarily remove non-“standardized” husbandry farms while the pollution caused by the newly built CAFOs in rural “black sites” was frequently overlooked because the “harmful acts do not meet the burden of proof to set the law in motion” (Lynch et al., 2020, p. 6). In this way, environmental targets actually helped the ToP to label noncompliance from grassroots agents and farmers as “criminal,” legitimating “precautionary logic” and “blunt-force” practices in regulation enforcement. The structural imperatives of economic expansion through agro-industrialization, therefore, set the socio-political context of regulation enforcement, and, as attested by the Chinese central government’s recent drive to increase pork production, shape how the regulatory regime responds to ecological and social disorganizations generated by industrial animal agriculture.

Conclusion

This article provides a political-economic analysis on the formulation and enforcement of post-2014 husbandry waste regulations in China. Our findings demonstrate that the state-led initiative to promote agro-industrialization has fundamentally shaped the definition of green crime and the forms of environmental social control for husbandry waste pollution in China. As such, the regulatory regime became a TOL that accelerated the geographical concentration and functional intensification of industrial animal agriculture, resulting in unintended ecological and social disorganization across rural China. The study contributes to political economy and species justice scholarship in green criminology by demonstrating how environmental social control mechanisms may accelerate the expansion and intensification of the “animal industrial complex” (Fitzgerald, 2015; Taylor & Fitzgerald, 2018; Twine, 2012; Wyatt, 2014). The findings also demonstrate how environmental laws as “socio-legal constructs” created by treadmill actors may exacerbate unequal ecological exchanges and legitimize the victimization of underprivileged communities (Fitzgerald et al., 2009; Goyes & South, 2015; Jacques, 2015; McClanahan & Linnemann, 2018; Schally, 2017). Utilizing Lynch et al.’s (2020) conceptualization of the TOL and Brisman (2017)’s “tensions for green criminology,” we demonstrate that the institutional constraints embedded within the top-down regulation enforcement model may generate a vicious cycle of ecological and social disorganization and intensify food and agricultural crimes that exacerbate ecological risks and social instabilities (Brisman et al., 2014; Brisman & South, 2019).

Footnotes

Note

1. Li, P. (2019, January 10). Henan jiu shi ba wan qin chu san yang hu shi xian “tui cun tui yua” [Henan 980,000 livestock and poultry farmers to achieve “retirement from the village”]. Xinhua News.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the special issue editor and the anonymous reviewers of the article for providing valuable and constructive comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

KuoRay Mao

Notes

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