Worlding Chinese environmental geographies: A systematic, bilingual literature review

Abstract

This bilingual systematic review captures 10 years (2010–2020) of debates and evidence from human geography research that foregrounds the lived experiences of Chinese citizens in accounts of environmental change. In this first bilingual review of everyday environmental geographies, we analyse 157 papers from 10 English and 10 mainland Chinese journals, using a range of thematic categorisations to capture qualitative environment–society research on China. Given the quantitative disparity between Chinese (128) and English (29) papers, we focus primarily on the Chinese literature but bring this into conversation with work in English, identifying the conceptual and theoretical foundations and empirical insights of both, and considering current debates and gaps in environmental research in, and on China. Our review contributes to calls within geography to recognise the importance of regional knowledge production, the need to move beyond Anglophone linguistic and epistemic privilege, and the need for better knowledge to be produced that represents the diverse lived experience of people in China and pushes for better outcomes. In our discussion, we identify key areas for future theoretical, thematic, methodological, and empirical inquiry in environmental geographies of China.