It is conventional wisdom that the Maoist state neglected environmental protection in favor of a drive to harness the environment for socialist construction. Only after Mao’s death, scholars assert, were laws promulgated to protect the environment. Kyuhyun Han’s book tentatively titled, Seeing the Forest Like a State: Forest Management, Wildlife Conservation, and Center-Periphery Relations in Northeast China, 1949 – 1988, challenges this premise through considering how Chinese policy developed in the context of international environmental consciousness during that time. Focusing on wildlife conservation and forest management in the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, the book tracks Chinese state efforts to regulate the environment from the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 to its promulgation of the Wildlife Protection Law in 1988. Despite these efforts, this period witnessed massive deforestation and species extinction in the Northeast. Han’s research will show that this was not the result of an absence of state regulations, but rather a product of bureaucratic compromises, the local economy, and the government’s relationship to indigenous Northeast peoples.