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Posted by Peter Gingold on 28/12/11

Director of arts and environment organisation Tipping Point Peter Gingold responds to Translating the Environment, a panel discussion hosted by Isabel Hilton and Sam Geall of chinadialogue.net

On December 8th, as the final event in the Translators in Residence series in 2011, we were treated to a presentation by Isabel Hilton and Sam Geall, respectively founding editor and deputy editor of chinadialogue.net. This remarkable website is almost alone among dual-language sites in that great efforts have been made to ensure it doesn’t favour one language over another; a post in English will be echoed in Chinese, and vice versa.

The website’s theme is of course the environment. And this is enough of a topic on its own, considering the extraordinary, and extraordinarily contradictory environmental attitudes China in its many guises displays.  But the subtext is almost more interesting: that through discussion and opening up to public scrutiny relatively un-controversial – maybe even factual – environmental challenges worldwide, the possibility emerges of airing some of the more politically challenging and difficult issues in China relating to democracy and the political process.

It is very clear that navigating this road requires great subtlety, from chinadialogue of course, but also from growing levels of internal activism. Along the way, delicious vignettes emerge, such as ‘crazy bad’ to describe environmental damage that is worse than hazardous.  Despite a widespread ‘develop first, clean up afterwards’ attitude, and a Ministry of the Environment that is a long way down the political pecking order, things are changing; not so long ago a Tweeted observation about an off-shore oil leak led, after initial official denial, to the closure of the operation. Isabel reports a much wider current spectrum of internal attitudes – from nationalistic denial at one end, to a form of unilateral activism at the other.

A word on Isabel Hilton: unfortunately this country does not have the tradition of co-opting people in civil life to positions of great political responsibility.  Isabel has a grasp of geo-politics, environmental issues, Chinese psychology, their political system and its undercurrents (not to mention Chinese) and much more, that is worthy of a major role on the world stage.  The comparator that comes to mind is Christine Lagarde, the new head of the IMF, since both also share a huge gift at communication, together with a magnificent helping of élan, of style.  How could such talents be used in political life? In the Foreign Office or DEFRA? Somehow it doesn’t feel quite right; anyway, perhaps we and the Chinese are all better off with her doing what she does so well. Congratulations- on creating chinadialogue, and for sharing it with us at the Free Word Centre.