With the impacts of climate change becoming more apparent year by year, politics across the world has increasingly focused on climate policy and addressing climate change. China, as the world’s largest emitter of carbon, is no exception to the rule. The Chinese government has set in place a number of policies meant to address the climate crisis, ranging from investment in renewable energy to the implementation of an emissions trading scheme.[1] Western understandings of China’s climate policy, however, often neglect to mention the key narrative that rests at the heart of it: Ecological Civilization (EC).
Ecological Civilization is a highly important narrative in Chinese politics, having been written into the Constitution of China in 2018.[2] Banners in the streets echo the words of President Xi Jinping’s slogan that “Green waters and clear mountains are mountains of gold and silver”, while within the party, cadre promotions have been rewritten to include evaluations of their adherence to ecological civilization.[3] China has even managed to showcase the framework of EC before the United Nations, with the UN Environment Programme choosing “Building an Ecological Civilization” as the theme for their 2020 biodiversity conference.[4] Despite all of this, however, EC is rarely understood, and even less commonly explained in non-Chinese literature, begging the question: What, exactly, is EC?
EC, as an ideology, represents a broad collection of different beliefs and practices. The core thesis is that it represents the belief that the success of humanity is fundamentally intertwined with that of nature, drawing on sources from Chinese philosophy to modern-day ecological science to justify said belief. Since Xi Jinping began his promotion of EC, however, the ideology has also slowly enmeshed itself into other core narratives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) such as those of nationalism, socialism, and “building the nation”. In writing Ecological Civilization into the Chinese constitution, the Xi government has indicated that it expects EC to play a central role in future party ideology and serve as an ideological guide for policy within China.
However, it is often difficult to understand how these beliefs and ideas translate into policy, especially considering two confounding factors. First, despite its new central role in the CCP’s political thought, EC is a poorly defined idea, with fluid boundaries that allow future leaders to easily modify the narratives present within to better suit contemporary goals. Second, due to China’s political system and the freedom given to lower-ranked bureaucrats in how ideology translates into policy, the policy implications of EC are often unclear, acting more as lip service paid towards the ideological core of the country than a rigidly defined set of guidelines for the administration to follow. Despite these confounding factors, however, EC and its policy implementations offer valuable insights into how China views the issue of environmentalism, as well as the effects of different innovative policies meant to encourage green development.
Currently, China has implemented a number of policy initiatives falling under the umbrella of EC, with a few common characteristics between them. First, most policies implemented generally focus on transitioning from high-speed economic growth to high-quality development, prioritizing reducing the harm to nature present from human action.[5] Additionally, many policies overtly evaluate and assign visible economic value to natural resources and functions, through methods such as emissions trading regulations and “forest banking”.[6] Finally, these policies often function through positive incentives, providing subsidies and training for environmentally friendly alternatives in fields such as agriculture or resource management, especially when regulating small business owners and farmers.
Alongside more obvious and ubiquitous environmental policies like pollution fines, emissions regulations, and a national level move towards clean energy, China has also implemented a variety of policies that have yet to be observed elsewhere. For instance, a number of Chinese counties have begun to tie together ecological policy and agricultural subsidies, working through public-private partnerships to advertise local agricultural products as “natural” or “pesticide-free”.[7] In these cases, local governments tie together positive incentives for increased profit and brand awareness to ecological policy, using it as a tool alongside subsidies and training to increase local adherence to environmental protection laws. Furthermore, a number of regulations in place seek to ascribe a set economic value to benefits provided by nature. The Chinese forest banking system in Fujian, for instance, allows traders to purchase shares in forests, paying out dividends based on the market price of the carbon captured per square meter of forest.[8] Similarly, emissions trading schemes place a hard value on emissions, allowing it to be bought and sold at market prices, influencing both how people view the environment as well as how its implicit value could be transformed into direct economic value. Many of these policies have achieved a surprising degree of success in implementation, managing to maintain a balance between long-term economic growth and preservation of the environment while motivating locals to adhere to policy regulations by presenting some degree of personal incentive (Delman, 2018).[9]
The implementation of these policies, as well as of Ecological Civilization as a whole, offers a few key insights into both how China plans to approach the issue of climate change and what the world may be able to learn from it. When analyzing China, the rise of EC proves that environmental consciousness is now heavily intertwined in the ideology of Chinese leadership, forcing future governments to consider or at least pay lip service to environmentalism in order to maintain a continuous political narrative. Additionally, the ideology marks another step in China’s pivot away from manufacturing by discouraging the pollution associated with manufacturing and extraction-heavy industries. This shift away from manufacturing is accompanied with more sustainable methods of “higher-quality” growth. The most important conclusions from China’s adoption of Ecological Civilization, however, may be seen through the policies that China has implemented. Chinese implementations of EC have seemingly proven that it is possible to harmonize economic development with environmental preservation and encourage adherence to environmental policy through directly quantifying and distributing the economic gains of environmentalism. While EC is still in a nascent stage, it appears that China wants to use it to prove to the world that it can successfully prioritize both economic development and environmental preservation. If it does succeed in the long term, China will not only have legitimized its role as a policy innovator, but also offer a new set of solutions for the world to use in resolving the climate crisis.
Jack Zhu is a current third-year student at the University of Toronto with majoring in International Relations and Peace, Conflict, and Justice, and a minor in Contemporary Asian Studies. His research interests involve the rise of China and its international implications, with past research experience as a member of the G20 research group and a volunteer for the Canada-China Business Council.
Footnotes
“ACTION PLAN FOR CARBON DIOXIDE PEAKING BEFORE 2030,” National Development and Reform Commission, October 27, 2021, https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202110/t20211027_1301020.html#:%7E:text=By%202030%2C%20the%20share%20of,carbon%20dioxide%20peaking%20before%202030.
Ping Huang, Linda Westman, “China’s imaginary of ecological civilization: A resonance between the state-led discourse and sociocultural dynamics,” Energy Research & Social Science 81 (2021): 3, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102253.
Yifan Gu, Yuefeng Wu, Jianguo Liu, Ming Xu, Tieyong Zhao, “Ecological civilization and government administrative system reform in China. Resources, Conservation and Recycling,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 155 (2020): 2 – 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104654.
“Building an ecological civilization: Theme for 2020 UN Biodiversity Conference announced,” UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, September 2019, https://www.unep-wcmc.org/en/news/building-an-ecological-civilization–theme-for-2020-un-biodiversity-conference-announced.
Shan, Jingjing, Guangyao Sheng, Wei Lou, Qiang Li, “Optimizing the Layout of Territorial Space,” in The Construction of Ecological Civilization in China, ed. Kaizhong Yang (Singapore: Springer, 2024), 93 – 94.
Ziwei, Zhong, Jing Yi. “China’s first ecological civilization pilot zone moves towards green growth.” People’s Daily. March 11, 2019. http://en.people.cn/n3/2019/0311/c90000-9554924.html.
“福建政和：聚焦重点 强化统筹 高质量推进农业绿色发展,” Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, March 22, 2024, http://www.jhs.moa.gov.cn/lsfz/202403/t20240322_6452163.htm.
“《行进中的美丽中国》治理之道：推动绿色发展 建设生态文明 重在建章立制！EP04【CCTV纪录】,” CCTV纪录, April 24, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4pl87ltDMQ.
Jorgen Delman, “Ecological civilization Politics and Governance in Hangzhou: New pathways to green urban development?,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 16, no. 7 (2018), https://apjjf.org/2018/17/delman.
Bibliography
“ACTION PLAN FOR CARBON DIOXIDE PEAKING BEFORE 2030.” National Development and Reform Commission. October 27, 2021. https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202110/t20211027_1301020.html#:%7E:text=By%202030%2C%20the%20share%20of,carbon%20dioxide%20peaking%20before%202030.
“《行进中的美丽中国》治理之道：推动绿色发展 建设生态文明 重在建章立制！EP04【CCTV纪录】,” CCTV纪录, April 24, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4pl87ltDMQ.
Delman, Jorgen. “Ecological civilization Politics and Governance in Hangzhou: New pathways to green urban development?.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 16, no. 7 (2018). https://apjjf.org/2018/17/delman.
Gu, Yifan, Yuefeng Wu, Jianguo Liu, Ming Xu, Tieyong Zhao. “Ecological civilization and government administrative system reform in China. Resources, Conservation and Recycling,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 155 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104654.
Huang, Ping, Linda Westman. “China’s imaginary of ecological civilization: A resonance between the state-led discourse and sociocultural dynamics.” Energy Research & Social Science 81 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102253.
“福建政和：聚焦重点 强化统筹 高质量推进农业绿色发展.” Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. March 22, 2024. http://www.jhs.moa.gov.cn/lsfz/202403/t20240322_6452163.htm.
Shan, Jingjing, Guangyao Sheng, Wei Lou, Qiang Li. “Optimizing the Layout of Territorial Space.” In The Construction of Ecological Civilization in China, edited by Kaizhong Yang (89 – 111). Singapore: Springer, 2024.
“Building an ecological civilization: Theme for 2020 UN Biodiversity Conference announced.” UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. September 2019. https://www.unep-wcmc.org/en/news/building-an-ecological-civilization–theme-for-2020-un-biodiversity-conference-announced.
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