From Rhetoric to Action: Talking About Environmental Rights in Contemporary China.

The necessity of using the law to address unrest has pushed "lawful environmental rights and interests"—the government-preferred formulation of environmental rights—towards an uncontroversial entitlement. Indeed, environmental rights look benign when even human rights are written into the Chinese constitution. But what exactly is a "lawful environmental right" and where did rights language come from? This paper explores both how elites talk about environmental rights and how these rights are translated into action. China's upwardly mobile classes have begun using environmental rights language to justify opposition to nearby high voltage towers, highways and railroad lines. I look at one NIMBY dispute, opposition to the Shanghai-Hangzhou magnetic levitation (maglev) train in 2006-2007, to explore how rights fit into a kaleidoscope of frames designed to elicit response from an opaque state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]