Jiao, Yunbo
Description
The central goal of this study is to produce an in-depth
understanding of the nature and dynamics of China-related
transnational environmental crime (TEC). To that end, this study
takes the Greater China – including mainland China, Hong Kong,
Macau, and Taiwan – as the specific geographic focus for its
investigation into three key TEC sectors (illegal trade in
wildlife, forest products, and ozone depleting substances (ODS)).
Overall, this study...[Show more] seeks to achieve the central goal in a
four-step sequence. First, it builds a network-centric conceptual
framework based on the idea of “networked threats require
networked responses” advocated by many influential scholars.
This framework focuses on addressing two puzzles: what
essentially constitutes a network threat; and what forms a
networked response. Second, it applies the concept of networked
threats to the study of China’s global trade in illegal
wildlife, forest products, and ODS. Third, it examines China’s
TEC-related legal frameworks and enforcement responses and
identifies key challenges that China has encountered in each of
the three selected TEC sectors. Fourth and finally, it combines
the above three lines of understandings – the accounts of
networked responses, the empirical findings of China’s illegal
trade, and the key regulatory and enforcement challenges
identified – to develop practical suggestions on how can China
apply the notion of networked responses to the formulation of
regulatory and enforcement strategies for addressing the
identified key challenges.
This study makes two broad arguments: one theoretically oriented
and one empirically directed. First, this study argues that while
the concept of networked threats can be approached along the
dimensions of transaction networks and directed networks,
networked responses are not a standard, formatted mode of
regulatory or enforcement responses. Instead, networked responses
should be understood as a special way of thinking and acting: a
way that sees a bright-side actor (e.g., enforcement agencies) as
operating in an environment occupied by various networks and
entities, which simultaneously present challenges in terms of
amplified (networked) threats, as well as opportunities in terms
of power amplifiers for the bright-side actor, in the sense that
they could potentially be leveraged for tackling these threats.
Second, China’s global trade in environmental contraband is
typified by the substantial scale of China’s black markets and
the deep embeddedness of China in the international and regional
illicit trade chains. These two features, on the one hand, pose a
serious challenge to the Chinese government in tackling its TEC;
while on the other hand, they imply that Chinese effort and
progress made toward addressing its illegal internal trade will
likely have a substantive, positive overflowing effect on the
whole of the international and regional illegal trade.
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