Co-optating Guanxi: How Taiwanese Petrochemical Industry Neutralized Environmental Opposition through Social Ties.

By a case of Taiwan’s environmental politics, this paper seeks to understand how existing social ties can be manipulated by industrial producers so as to neutralize the local opposition to pollution. Guanxi, as a form of social ties in Chinese societies, stresses relational propriety and mutual reciprocity. Hence, the absence of guanxi between industry and local communities invites anti-pollution protests, which explains the wave of mass insurgency in the late-1980s. Afterwards, business installs a series of community reward programs to establish guanxi with local elites. Now elites play the role of redistributors and broker, rather than protest leaders, and consequently, the popular discontent over pollution is contained. I argue that rewards are not merely bribery, but a resource to create morally indebtedness on the part of local elites who become dependent on industry to satisfy their constituencies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]