Forestry Policy New Deal In China: Policy Process And Effect

The eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party China proposed to takeecological civilization as an important part of the "five-in-one" social construction. Italso issued a declaration of ecological civilization in China. The Third Plenary Sessionof the eighteen National People’s Congress further proposed to accelerate the reformsand institutional constructions of ecological civilization, and push the reforms to theimplementation level. Forests can be seen as the most abundant content in theconstruction of ecological civilization. On the one hand, the forest itself has a highecological value in maintaining ecosystems and climate change. On the other hand, theforest is also a system to provide economic information, employment opportunities, andother properties. In China, it took a long time for the concept of forest ecologicalpriority and ecological security to become the consensus of the whole society. And thechange of institutional mechanisms of forest, which originated from the plannedeconomic system, has been full of challenges. The exploration and experiment indealing with the relations between government and market, central and localgovernments, national and social communities…have indeed provided importantreference cases for the construction of ecological civilization.In this paper, I would start from a series of ecological forest construction in Chinasince the late1990s, which is defined herein,"Forest Deal". Through analysis of thehistorical context, the causes, the impact of changes in forest resources and the changesof patterns and institutions in the implementation of policies, I’m hoping to portrait theprocess of decision and implementation of China’s forest policies since the1990s,explore the key mechanisms and change factors, find their problems after empirical testsof the effectiveness and then propose the orientation and outlook of future policies.This paper begins with three research questions.1) In what kind of condition wasthe Forest Deal in the late1990s generated? From the perspective of policy process,China was among the political cycle of the third generation of collective leadership inthe late1990s. Why was the sudden appearance of the forest Deal when policy-makersand decision-making mechanisms witnessed no significant change?2) As a quick-raisedpolicy, did Forest Deal influence the changes of forest resources? Was it related to thefast increase of forest resources in the1990s?3) As a relative mandatory institutional change, was the implementation of the New Deal based on any key policy mechanisms?Was the previous system of forest construction able to undertake the New Deal? Andthrough different stages of policy adjustments, what achievements were made? Andwhat problems were raised?Around these three issues, I’m going to take a hybrid approach of qualitativeanalysis and quantitative empirical analysis. Through the establishment of theoreticalframework to analyze the decision and implementation of Forest Deal, the Qualitativeanalysis uses Consensus-reaching model to analyze the forest construction before theForest Deal and the process of reaching consensus about the new Forest Deal. Then,using a quantitative method to establish an inter-provincial panel with data from secondto the seventh forest resources inventory (1977-2009), I would empirically test theactual effects of policy changes on forest resources. Again, using qualitative methods,I’m going to conduct static analysis on the implementation of Forest Deal with theclassification of forest governance mechanisms Deal performance, and dynamicanalysis with policy pattern changes. Then, with an inter-provincial panel of data from2000-2012, I’m going to do an empirical test of the effectiveness of the New Dealduring the execution of forest policy changes in different phases and stages.Then, create consecutive years2000-2012inter-provincial panel, change. Finally,based on the foregoing results, I’m going to propose new orientations and outlook onthe next phase of Forest Deal.The main innovation of this paper is as followed. First, from the perspective of thenational macro-ecological construction，I take a series of forest policy in the late1990sas a united research object in the macro historical phase. Forest Deal is actually a policysystem of forest. Through systematic perspective, it is possible to not only see thedetails, but also the whole picture. Second, to be able to carry out an overall assessmentof the forest Deal, I establish an inter-provincial panel based on forest inventory dataand use the system GMM to overcome a first-order lag term error, which subsequentlysupport the empirical research of metering panel surrounding forest resources. Againfrom the theoretical discussion, the economic perspective of forest policies and theperspective of policy process are combined to analyze the policy-making andimplementation of Forest Deal."Eco-redemption" model and "comprehensiveredemption "model are raised on the base of forest policy patterns, and were bothempirically tested, which provides certain support to study the changes of forest policies. Finally, in the conclusion of this study, it discusses the unique meaning of Forest Dealin terms of macroeconomic policy goals and policy implementation mechanisms, andthus find that the policy consensus of China’s New Deal reflects the building processand influencing factors of the awareness of ecological priority among the governmentleaders. It also shows how to build a practical and complete system of implementationin ecology through policy designs by the top government leaders. On the operationallevel, it discusses the classified governance mechanisms and dynamic policy-changingprocess, and raises the possible problems of inconspicuous performance of"comprehensive redemption". Therefore, it provides suggestions to the next phase of theNew Deal in creating a more effective eco-economic-social-balanced greentransformation mechanism, and becoming pioneer in the national construction ofecological civilization.