This paper seeks to explain, via the theories carved out by Beck and Touraine, the current environmental protests in China surrounding issues such as hydropower dam construction, specifically the Three Gorges Dams. China, being an authoritarian regime, is rather different from the democratic societies of France and Germany, but the modernization of the Chinese state and the ongoing changes in China’s state-society relations have made it possible for comparisons to be drawn. In addition, although China has not by definition, reached the ‘post-industrial’ stage of economic development, Touraine’s and Beck’s theories provide a framework for analyzing China’s current situation and the possibility of its civil society’s current ecological protests and struggles to escalate into social movements. Whether the emergence of environmental movements is possible in China has been the focus of much current research, but much analysis has focused on the political aspects of the Chinese state. Beck and Touraine’s theories provide an alternative sociological framework to better understand the current environmental protests in China and why large-scaled environmental movements have not yet emerged.
