As ‘techno-politics’ holds sway, is a water commons possible in China?

So far the debate about China’s current environmental issues has given little consideration to already existing popular alternatives to the top-down, growth-compatible governance of the country’s endangered natural resources. Forty years of Party-sanctified insistence on pursuing relentless economic development has seemingly muffled the few dissenting voices and suppressed alternative discourses in natural resource management — such as those concerned with stewardship, care, maintenance, or even rejuvenation of the Chinese environment.