中美反转 |《异见》杂志
China and the United States: Reversing Roles on Climate Change?
唐纳德·特朗普丑闻不断升级，人们倒可能忘了他当总统意味着应对环境问题和抗击全球气候变化遭遇空前挫折。他选择斯考特·普鲁伊特担任美国环保署署长只是一系列行动和宣言的第一步，后者标志着本届政府对环保敌意最深。这反映出特朗普对煤炭和化石燃料的感情，不屑于科学和监管层的干预，任命产业支持者担任内政部、农业部和能源部部长，更别提环保署，他们与所在岗位存有重大利益冲突。
At the same time, China, the second-largest economy in the world and now the largest emitter of carbon emissions, appears to be heading in the other direction. China, its Premier Li Keqiang declares, is ready to wage a “war on pollution” while its president, Xi Jinping, embraces a leading role for China in creating a green economy at a scale far beyond that of any other country, including the United States.
另一方面，中国作为世界第二大经济体和如今最大的碳排放国，却走向相反的路上。中国总理李克强宣布准备发动一场“对污染的战争”，习近平通过大规模发展绿色经济赋予中国领导权，其规模远超其他国家，其中包括美国。
All of this raises the question of whether an environmental role reversal between China and the United States is taking place. The answer, sometimes surprising, is yes and no.
所有这些令人怀疑，中美在环境问题上扮演的角色是否发生反转。答案既是也不是，这可能有点让人吃惊。
For longtime China-watchers, the idea of an environmental role reversal seems counterintuitive. During the past three decades, China’s embrace of marketization, rapid development, globalization, modernization, and urbanization turned it into an environmental outlier. This reputation had been secured by its horrendous smog episodes, water unfit to drink and even to use for irrigation, huge increases in the number of cars on the road, and other negative environmental impacts. China is also a global leader in the use of pesticides, a major coal producer, consumer, and importer, and, until recently, a reluctant participant in global climate negotiations.
对一个长期中国观察者而言，环境角色的倒转似乎有悖直觉。过去的三十年中，中国对市场化、快速发展、全球化、现代化和城市化全盘接纳，成为环保的局外人。可怕的雾霾频仍，水不仅不适合饮用，甚至连灌溉都不行，汽车数量不断增加，还有对环境的种种负面影响，难怪声名不佳。中国是全球农药用量最大的国度，主要煤炭生产者、消费者和进口者，此前不久还不愿参与全球气候谈判。
The United States, prior to Trump, had a more uneven reputation. Many of the environmental problems that China is experiencing today were part of the fabric of development since the industrial revolution and the United States’ own shift to an urban and suburban nation. During the 1950s and ‘60s, in cities like Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, activists wore gas masks in their protests against air pollution—like many in China today. Rivers, streams, and groundwater basins became undrinkable water sources, and were unfit for swimming, navigation, and even agricultural use. The pesticide revolution had its origins in the 1940s in the adoption of the California industrial agriculture model. And there are still more cars on the road in the United States than anywhere else in the world.
特朗普之前，美国名声同样可谓毁誉参半。自工业革命和美国自身转型为“城市+郊区”国家以来，许多今日中国遭遇的环境问题也是美国发展中必不可少的一部分。上世纪五十年代到六十年代，在匹兹堡和洛杉矶等城市，活动人士戴着防毒面具抗议空气污染，同许多中国人一样。河流和地下水难以饮用，不适合游泳、航行，甚至难以用于农业用途。农药革命源于二十世纪四十年代，采用了加利福尼亚州的产业农业模式。现在美国道路上的汽车仍然是全世界最多的。
However, thanks to environmental activism that took off in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, laws and regulations such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act helped change the United States’ environmental reputation. The U.S. record after that has remained decidedly mixed, as some administrations have cut back on environmental efforts (notably during Judge Neil Gorsuch’s mother’s reign at the EPA), and the fossil fuel industry’s grip has remained intractable—such that the United States continues to maintain an outsized role in contributing to problems like global climate change. During Obama’s presidency, as China surpassed the United States in carbon emissions and continued to use more coal and put more cars on the road, political figures, journalists, and even some environmental groups were quick to take the moral high ground, painting China as an unparalleled environmental offender.
但由于二十世纪六十年代末和七十年代初开始出现的环保活动，出台了《清洁空气法》和《清洁水法》等法律和规定，这有助于改变美国在环境方面的名声。后来美国表现显然毁誉参半：某些总统任期内，政府遏制环保（尤其是大法官尼尔·戈萨奇母亲管理美国环保署期间），化石燃料业依然势大难伏，这让美国继续在造成全球气候变化等问题上扮演主角。奥巴马任期内，中国碳排放量超过美国，且继续利用更多煤炭，并让更多车辆上路，政客、记者甚至一些环保团体立刻占领道德高地，将中国描绘成一个空前的环境破坏者。
Will that perception now begin to change? China, in the last few years, has increased its environmental bragging rights. While there are more cars on the road, there are also more electric cars than anywhere else in the world, thanks in part to quotas for electric cars—as much as 20 percent of cars that can be sold—and even limits to the number of cars that can be sold in a particular region on a lottery basis. However, the desire of China’s rising middle class to purchase new cars remains strong and even obsessive.
现在这种认知会发生变化吗？过去几年间，中国在环境问题上拥有更多可供炫耀的资本。尽管越来越多的车辆上路行驶，但电动汽车数量多于世界其他地区，部分原因是推行了电动汽车配额，20%的售出车辆须为电动车，在个别地区，还通过摇号限制汽车数量。但中国正在崛起的中产阶级购买新车的欲望依然强烈，甚至痴迷。
For example, the Shenzhen government announced in 2014 that any lottery restricting car sales would give advance notice and solicit public feedback. However, six months later, a quota policy was announced limiting annual sales to 100,000 cars (20,000 of them electric) but gave less than an hour before it was to be enforced. The announcement caused an immediate spike in internet messaging and a rush to car dealers (who in turn immediately raised their prices). “It seemed like buying a cabbage rather than a car,” commented one car buyer who had rushed to beat the deadline, amid the flurry of cash changing hands.
比如，深圳市政府2014年宣布，一切摇号限制售车行为都将提前通知并征求公众意见。但六个月后，宣布每年限售10万辆车（其中2万辆为电动汽车），从宣布到实施不足一个小时。声明立即在网上传开，人们争相奔向汽车经销商，经销商则立刻提价。“就像在买白菜而不是买车，”一个赶在截止时间前买到车的人说，人们把迫不及待地要现金洒出去。
Before cars became the kings of the road, bicycles were ubiquitous in China. During the Mao period, from 1949 through the 1970s, China appropriately became known as the “Bicycle Kingdom” as bikes became the preferred and most convenient mode of transport for reorganized work and living units (the danwei). As a result, production of bikes for the domestic market and the use of bikes for daily trips increased dramatically.
汽车成为道路主宰前，自行车在中国随处可见。在毛泽东时代，从1949年到整个七十年代，中国是名副其实的“自行车王国”，自行车受大众喜爱，是往返单位最方便的交通方式。结果，国内市场产量和日常出行的自行车使用率大幅增加。
By the 1990s, production of bikes for the domestic market peaked, even though overall production, now primarily focused on export markets, continued to grow. Cycling became identified in China as a second-rate mode of transport, and cyclists were increasingly seen as getting in the way of motor traffic. “Improved efficiency of junctions can only be achieved by taking the cyclists out of the equation,” officials in Shanghai argued in 2001, asserting that cycling’s image was “inappropriate to a World City at the forefront of the technological revolution.”
到了二十世纪九十年代，国内自行车产量达到顶峰开始走低，总产量保持增长，但主要面向出口。在中国，骑自行车被看成一种二流的出行方式，骑行者日益被认为妨碍了机动车交通。“提升路口通行能力，只有把骑车的清走才行。”上海官员在2001年说，并指出骑车形象“不适合身处技术革命前沿的世界级城市”。
That negative image persisted in China as late as 2009. That year, ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference, China’s lead representative at the climate talks, Yu Qingtai, was quoted as saying that “every Chinese citizen should have the right to all of the modern industrial and transportation options enjoyed by, say, Americans—including the right to own a car.” “We should not be expected to stay forever as a kingdom of bicycles!” Qingtai told NPR’s Robert Dreyfuss.
直到2009年，这一消极形象依然存在。当年，哥本哈根气候大会前，中国首席气候谈判代表于庆泰说，“每个中国公民都有权享受美国人享有的现代工业技术和交通工具，比如有权拥有一辆汽车”，“我们不应永远被当成自行车王国。”于庆泰对美国国家公共电台的罗布特·德雷福斯说。
By 2010, however, the image of a “world city” as amenable to, if not supportive of, developing bicycle infrastructure led to a renewed interest and revival in bike use in China. New bike-share programs were instituted and quickly surpassed other programs around the world, in keeping with China’s speed in deploying other innovations. Bike lanes that had been eliminated began to be restored, and even a vice-minister in the Ministry of Construction, Qiu Baoxing, argued that it was important for China to regain its reputation as the “Kingdom of Bicycles.”
可到2010年，“世界城市”形象倾向于发展自行车基础设施建设，即使条件不足，这使人们对自行车重新有了兴趣，并再次骑上了自行车。新的单车共享项目推出并立刻超过世界上其他项目，跟上中国其他创新项目的步伐。一度被淘汰的自行车道恢复起来了，甚至连建设部副部长仇保兴都说，让中国重获“自行车王国”称号是重要的。
Today, despite the new interest in bike sharing and restoring bike lanes and other bike-related initiatives, bike riding in China has continued to decline while car use has skyrocketed. Domestic bike production remains limited, while the manufacturing sector continues to emphasize exports.
今天，尽管人们对共享单车产生新兴趣，自行车道得以恢复，其他自行车相关计划正在实施，但自行车出行比例继续下降，汽车出行比例飞速上升。国内市场的自行车生产依然有限，制造业继续强调出口。
China has also flooded the U.S. market with cheaper bikes and even forced Kent International, one of the largest U.S. bike producers, to move some of its manufacturing overseas. By 2015 nearly two-thirds of China’s bike production revenues were from exports, in contrast to the United States, where 99 percent of the bikes sold today are imported, with many of those (upwards of 70 percent) coming from China.
中国还用廉价自行车冲击美国市场，甚至迫使美国最大的自行车生产商之一肯特国际将制造业转移到海外。截至2015年，中国自行车生产收入将近三分之二来自出口，与美国形成鲜明对比，美国99%的自行车销售都是进口货， 其中很多（高达70%）来自中国。
Other transportation-related changes with important environmental consequences have been rapidly introduced in China, most in just the past few years. Subway and rail systems have expanded dramatically in places like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and many mid-sized cities (population 4-8 million) are now clamoring for their systems as well. High-speed rail has been built along several of the main urban corridors connecting such cities as Shanghai and Nanjing, while others are in the planning or construction stage, such as a proposed Hong Kong to Guangzhou route. China has now surpassed Japan and Europe as the leader in high-speed rail. It was a 2013 trip on China’s high-speed rail that cemented California Governor Jerry Brown’s passion to build such a system in his state.
其他与交通有关变革迅速引入中国，产生重要的环境影响，大部分就发生在过去几年。地铁和铁轨道在北京、上海、广州等地大幅扩大，许多中型城市（人口400到800万）如今也争相建造轨道体系。高铁沿几个主要城市走廊建造完成，连接上海和南京等城市，其他铁路则在规划中或者建设中，例如计划从香港到广州的铁路。中国超过日本和欧洲，成为高铁领导者。2013年乘坐中国高铁旅行，让加州州长杰里·布朗热衷于在加州建造这样的交通系统。
China’s focus on rail and major growth of urban transit systems has taken place in some of the most polluted air basins in the country, and not by coincidence. Air pollution has been the most emblematic effect of the country’s ambitious industrial development and urbanization strategies since gradual economic liberalization began in the 1980s.
中国集中力量修建轨道，城市交通系统大幅增长，发生在国家空气污染最严重的谷地，这并非巧合。 自二十世纪八十年代推行经济自由化以来，空气污染是国家雄心勃勃的工业发展和城市化战略中最具象征性的产物。
The development of new industries, including for export production; expanded energy development, particularly coal-based; and rapid expansion of car use became the major contributors to the dramatic increase in air pollution. What especially distinguished China was the speed and extent to which these types of developments and their related environmental consequences, including air pollution, occurred.
新产业的发展，包括出口产业；能源扩张，尤其以煤为基础的工业；汽车迅速增长，这些成为空气污染急剧恶化的主因。中国特别突出的是这些发展方式及其环境后果（包括空气污染）发生的速度和程度。
By 2013, the central government began to respond with a flurry of new policy initiatives. This included the first national Action Plan on Prevention and Control of Air Pollution, commonly known as “the ten measures to improve air quality,” as well as an improved air monitoring system that included real-time data. “The ten measures” suggested “a new mechanism for air pollution control led by government, enforced by companies, driven by market and participated in by the public” and set ambitious targets for air quality improvement. While concerns were clearly related to health and economic concerns (for example, greater incidences of environmental-related disease and reduced productivity), a major factor continued to be image and reputation. Xi Jinping, for example, remarked at an international conference he hosted in Beijing in 2014 that he hoped the air would be clear in Beijing for his hosts since air quality, he argued, was essential for “people’s perception of happiness.”
到2013年，中央政府推出一系列新政策举措，包括第一个《国防大气污染防治行动计划》，通常被称为“改善空气质量十条”，改进了空气监测系统，开始实时监测。 “十条”提出“政府主导，企业担责，市场驱动，公众参与的空气污染治理新机制”，制定改善空气质量的宏伟目标。虽然人们担忧健康和经济问题（例如，与环境相关的疾病高发，生产力下降），可主要驱动力仍然是形象和声誉。习近平2014年在北京举行的国际会议上表示，他希望主政期间北京的空气变得干净，因为空气质量对“人们的幸福感”至关重要。
While there were concerns that air pollution was fueling public discontent, the government also concluded that this discontent did not threaten the stability of the system. Most of the reactions, such as the trade in gas masks or the installation of air filters in homes, were individual, and popular protests were limited. Those individual responses were also largely class-based: wealthier parents would choose the more elite schools with better filtering systems or move to areas where pollution levels were lower or even travel abroad during the most polluted periods.
虽然有人担心空气污染会加剧公众不满情绪，但政府认为这种不满不会威胁系统稳定。大多数反应，如隔离口罩销售火爆，或在家中安装空气净化器，这是个人行为，民众抗议活动受到限制。这些个人回应也要看你属于哪个阶层：更加富裕的父母会选择更优质的学校，安装更好的过滤系统，或搬到污染程度较低的地区，甚至在污染最严重时期出国旅游。
Even as the central government began to respond, one of its core challenges has been implementation. By 2017, the failure of provincial and local governments to implement hundreds of environmental regulations established at the national level has undermined China’s quest to improve its environmental performance. For polluting industries, the low costs of business as usual have outweighed the penalties for snubbing regulations, a long-standing problem in many other countries as well. Moreover, local and provincial governments were not only wedded to the country’s broad development goals that themselves ran counter to environmental reforms but often had their own stake in the business interests driving local air pollution.
中央政府开始应对，但其核心挑战之一是实施。到2017年，省级和地方政府未能实施国家层面推行的数百项环境法规，破坏了中国改善环境绩效目标。对于污染行业而言，低成本经营一如既往地比无视规定接受处罚更合算，这也是许多其他国家长期存在的问题。此外，地方和省级政府不仅是国家庞大发展目标的一部分，这些目标本身就与环境改革相悖，另外它们还有自己的经济利益，导致当地的空气污染。
But at the central government level, it is increasingly clear that air pollution and other key environmental issues are beginning to rival economic development and urbanization as priorities. Smog, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang famously stated in one National People’s Congress, represented a “red-light warning against inefficient and blind development.” New penalties and fines have been established to hold local government officials accountable for failing to implement environmental policies. “Ecological civilization” has been elevated as a central policy objective. This latter goal was spelled out in a 2015 document of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and State Council on the Promotion of Ecological Civilization that called for “abandoning economic growth as the only criterion in government performance assessment [and establishing] a lifelong accountability system.”
但在中央层面，越来越清楚，空气污染等重大环境问题开始与经济发展和城镇化相抵牾。广为人知，国务院总理李克强在某届全国人大代表大会上称，雾霾给“低效、盲目的发展亮了红灯”。新的惩罚和罚款让地方政府官员对未执行环境政策负责。 “生态文明”升级为中央政策目标。2015年，中共中央国务院关于促进生态文明建设的文件确定了这一目标，“抛弃以经济增长作为政府绩效评估的唯一标准，并建立终身问责制”。
Where environmental protests in China have become more visible and militant, they have been directed at local industrial enterprises and governments that have been working (and profiting) together. Toxic ingredients in food products, water pollution due to industrial discharges or pesticide runoff, or the use of toxic substances for production in areas that resemble sacrifice zones like Louisiana’s “cancer alley” have generated some of the sharpest protests. Many of these are spontaneous and often organized through social media.
中国的环保抗议越来越多，越来越激烈，他们把矛头指向地方工厂企业和政府，两者共事且共利。 食品中含有有毒成分，因工业排放或农药渗入造成水污染，或同路易斯安那州“癌症带”那样被牺牲的地区一样使用有毒物质进行生产，这些都引发尖锐的抗议活动。许多活动是自发的，经常通过社交媒体得以组织。
Back stateside, since November 8, things have been going in virtually the opposite direction. The Trump administration’s proposed 31 percent cut to the EPA budget and elimination of 25 percent of the agency’s workforce is the most striking symbol of that reversal. Cutting grants that allow public water authorities to monitor their tap water is an invitation to future Flint-type disasters, given the amount of lead in older pipes or in school drinking-water fountains that have not been replaced or retrofitted.
回到美国本土，11月8日以来，事态实际上向相反方向发展。特朗普政府提出削减环保署预算达31%，精简该机构25％的人力，这堪称发生逆转的最明显象征。考虑到旧水管及未更换或改装的学校饮用水箱的铅含量之高，砍掉公共水务部门监测自来水的预算无疑会招致下一场的弗林特式的灾难。
Meanwhile, executive orders or administrative actions to complete the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines are an opening salvo designed to restore fossil fuel development as the country’s top energy priority. Trump’s fondness for coal, however, is not actually likely to increase domestic coal production, let alone coal-related jobs. Even if coal producers remain most interested in increasing coal exports, including to China, reduced domestic use is likely to still mean an overall decline or at the best a flattening of coal production. And as mining grows ever more automated, coal jobs will continue to decline regardless.
同时，推进凯斯通和达科他输油管道的行政令或政府行为堪称一记当头炮，旨在将化石燃料开发再次当做国家的首要能源选择。但特朗普对煤炭的喜好实际上不会增加国内煤炭产量，更别提与煤炭业的岗位。即使煤炭生产商增加对包括中国在内的煤炭出口最感兴趣，国内用量的减少可能仍然意味着销量整体下滑，充其量使销量持平。 随着采矿日益自动化，煤炭岗位无论如何都将继续收缩。
Much of the attention to the Trump-Pruitt environmental counterrevolution has been focused on the damage they could do (or have already begun to do) with regard to climate change. Efforts to dismantle the Clean Power Plan instituted by the Obama Administration in 2015; talk about doing away with vehicle emission reduction targets or enforcement; cutting back research funding, including funding for the satellites that monitor the climate; eliminating climate studies from the EPA web pages; and even smaller but significant steps such as eliminating the Energy Star program to set energy efficiency benchmarks for specific products are just the beginning. Under Scott Pruitt and his boss, no environmental rule or regulation is safe.
人们对特朗普-普鲁伊特反环境行为的大部分注意力集中在他们对气候变化可能造成（或已经造成）的破坏。努力废除奥巴马政府2015年制定的《清洁能源计划》，提议取消车辆减排目标或执行，削减研究经费，包括资助监测气候的卫星，从环保署网页上移除气候变化研究，甚至更微乎其微却相当重要的步骤，如取消“能源之星”计划，该计划旨在为特定产品设定节能标准等，这些只是开始。在斯科特·普鲁伊特和他老板治下，没有一项环境法规或规定高枕无忧。
In a fascinating interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News in early April, Pruitt sought to deflect criticism around this dramatic rollback of environmental policies by arguing that states will be free to pursue goals that EPA is abandoning, such as restoration of the Great Lakes. But the Trump administration is eager to take away the power that states like California have utilized in the past when taking action on issues like air pollution and vehicle emissions as well as on climate change. In some respects, these tensions between local, regional, and state-level governments and the new administration represent the reverse of China’s situation: progressive cities and states have become important arenas for resistance to the Trump-Pruitt counterrevolution, whereas China’s local and regional governments have been more of a barrier to environmental action—just as some red states had been with the Obama administration’s modest, though important, actions on the environment, particularly in the last two years of Obama’s presidency.
四月初，接受福克斯新闻网克里斯·华莱士的采访时，普鲁伊特试图转移对环境政策重大倒退的批评，争辩说各州将自行设定环保署放弃的目标，例如涵养大湖区。但特朗普政府急切要夺走加州等地过去采取行动治理空气污染、车辆排放及气候变化等问题的权力。从某种角度说，在地方、大区、州政府与新政府间的紧张关系和中国情形正好相反：进步的城市和州已经成为抵抗特朗普-普鲁伊特反环保政策的重要舞台，而中国地方及地区政府更多去阻碍环保行动。某些共和党州认同奥巴马政府温和但重要的环保做法，尤其在奥巴马总统任期的最后两年。
One reason for stronger local and regional and statewide action has been the critical role of U.S. environmental and climate justice movements in changing the nature of the debate and ultimately the agenda for action. Some of those actions, like the protests against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the drinking water protests in Flint, or some of the local actions against fracking, have gained media attention. In some cases, the protests have even reversed plans for development. Moreover, some of the environmental justice actions, such as the campaigns to develop a zero-emissions goal around ports, trucks, and the transport of goods, have led to key regional and statewide “Clean Air” policies and highlighted opportunities for new technologies that the ports, trucking companies, and governmental entities regulating them had neglected. These have led to important outcomes for both local communities most heavily impacted by pollution from the ports and transport of goods but have also had national and global implications, notably their climate change benefits.
县、市、州的行动更为积极的一个原因是，美国环境和气候正义运动发挥了关键作用，改变了争论的性质，并最终改变了行动议程。其中一些行动，如抗议凯斯通XL和达科他输油管道，抗议弗林特饮用水污染，或者反页岩气开采的某些地方行为，引起媒体关注，某些抗议活动甚至逆转了开发计划。另外，一些环境正义行动，例如推动港口、卡车和货运零排放目标，促使出台了地区和州域的关键“清洁空气”政策，突出了新技术带来的机遇，港口、货运公司及政府监管机构忽视了这些新技术。这对受港口及货运污染影响最为严重的当地社区产生重要影响，同时也带来全国和全球影响，特别是气候变化方面的益处。
Trump’s infrastructure plans, likely to be heavy on privatization schemes and to disregard environmental impacts from places like ports, have been presented as a bipartisan olive branch but are unlikely to go over well in practice. Environmental justice groups are now well equipped not only to oppose such plans themselves but to stiffen the response of state and Congressional allies as well. Following in the footsteps of the January Women’s March, the massive April 22 and April 29 demonstrations that targeted Trump’s anti-science and anti-environmental agenda have displayed the critical role of a newly energized environmental resistance.
特朗普的基础设施开发计划，可能主要依赖私人企业，忽视港口等地可能造成的环境影响，计划被视作伸给两党的橄榄枝，但实践中可能表现不佳。环境正义团体现在做好准备，不但自身反对这些计划，还要使各州和国会盟友的立场强硬起来。继一月举行的妇女游行后，4月22日和29日再次举行大规模示威，针对特朗普反科学和反环境议程，这显示出再掀高潮的环保抵抗运动发挥了关键作用。
Has there been a reversal of roles between China and the United States, then? Even Chris Wallace, in his interview with Scott Pruitt shortly before Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit in April, asked that question, particularly with respect to climate change. Pruitt pushed back on the question, arguing that the US had been successful in reducing carbon emissions—a change, as critics pointed out, due to actions that the Obama administration had taken and that Trump/Pruitt now wanted to reverse.
那么，中美之间的角色是否发生逆转了呢？甚至克里斯·华莱士在四月习近平访美前采访斯科特·普鲁伊特时也问了这个问题，特别在气候变化方面。普鲁伊特挡回了这个问题，他认为美国在减排方面很成功，批评家指出，这种变化归功于奥巴马政府采取的行动，而特朗普和普鲁伊特现在想加以扭转。
In that sense, surveying the current discourse and policies at the national level, one could say that yes, there is a role reversal in progress. But at the local and state level in the United States or province level in China, the answer is more ambiguous: some states and local areas continue to champion action around the environment and climate change while others (like Pruitt’s own state of Oklahoma) resist or even seek to reverse such action. Meanwhile, implementation in China at the local and regional level is at best uncertain and can sometimes sabotage any change.
从这个意义说，在国家层面上对当前的话语和政策进行考察，可以说没错，角色逆转正在发生。但美国地方或州域层面与中国各省相比，答案更显暧昧：某些州和地方继续支持有关环保和应对气候变化的行动，但另外一些州（如普鲁伊特自己的俄克拉荷马州）则抵制或甚至设法扭转这种行动。与此同时，中国在地方和地区层面上执行情况充其量是不确定的，也有破坏变革的可能。
Author: Robert Gottlieb is the founder and former Executive Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. Simon Ng is an independent consultant and former Chief Research Officer of Civic Exchange, a public policy think tank in Hong Kong. Their latest, co-authored book is Global Cities: Urban Environments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China (MIT Press).