Coastal Zone Management in the People ’ s Republic of China : A Unique Approach ?

China’s 18,000-kilometer coastline encompasses a region of great economic importance to the country, accounting for about 56 percent of its GDP (Wang, 1992). Swelling populations and an unbroken trend of urbanization throughout the east coast increasingly challenges the conservation of China’s vast coastal zone. While the Chinese government has begun to recognize the crucial role the ocean’s living and nonliving resources play in China’s energy and food security, balancing economic growth with the need to protect marine resources calls for a more sophisticated and better coordinated coastal management system than China currently employs. Currently, China’s coast is divided into twelve administrative units. Such fragmentation creates many obstacles to establishing more coordinated management approaches such as integrated coastal zone management (ICZM), which aims to promote sustainable development of coastal areas by taking into account social and economic issues, as well as environmental protection. According to the World Coast Conference (National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management, 1993) and the United Nations (ESCAP, 1995), key criteria for successful implementation of ICZM are: (1) coordinated legislation, (2) efficient institutional organization, and (3) a high degree of public participation. While democratic countries can more easily fulfill these ICZM criteria, countries like China with a one-party state and partially reformed political system may lack the necessary transparency and public participation preconditions. Nonetheless, with modifications ICZM still could be implemented. In the People’s Republic of China, the slow government bureaucracy—a legacy of Communist political reality—and the continued reliance on relationnetworks (guanxi) often stymie the creation of complex policy solutions like ICZM. One of the key reforms to help create more efficient policymaking in China has been the decentralization of political, administrative, and economic power over the past twenty years, which has stimulated economic growth and strengthened local governments. Central and local governments can be, as is discussed below, both obstacles and catalysts for successful ICZM in China, therefore it is crucial for the Chinese leadership to harmonize top-down and bottomup conservation and development initiatives to sustainably manage the country’s coastal zones.