Authoritarian environmentalism and epistemological violence: A Southern green criminology analysis of the 2014 Lanzhou water crisis and the belt and road initiative expansion into the global water sector

, KuoRayMao and Zhong Zhao

No 8akq3_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This article examines authoritarian states’ roles in commodifying freshwater resources in illiberal societies. The authors argue that collusion between global capitalism and national authoritarian interests has affected the legal structure, regulation enforcement, and institutional practices of public–private partnerships in China’s municipal water systems, resulting in regulatory failures in drinking water provision. The article also explores the implications of China’s state capitalist expansion into the global water utilities market as part of the green Belt and Road Initiative and suggests that this expansion may lead to new patterns of environmental concerns in the Global South. The findings demonstrate that collusion between neoliberal and authoritarian capitalist expansions shapes increasing inequalities and environmental governance standards in the Global South. The authors stress the need to view environmental and public health disasters resulting from water privatization as a transnational crime rather than solely focusing on nation-state regulatory mechanisms that exemplify “metropolitan thinking” in criminology.

Date: 2026-07-25
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6a6506355a27721317ba9c33/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:8akq3_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/8akq3_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().