Hope and Fear: China’s Environmental Values
TUESDAY 15 FEBRUARY / 11AM–1PM / BOOK HERE
Professor Maurizio Marinelli, History
Since the beginning of the economic reforms in 1978, rapid industrialization, extensive land development and full-scale urbanization have been the priorities of the Chinese government’s policies. For more than forty years, the Chinese economy has registered growth at an annual average of 9.8%. In 2012, however, it became clear that China was ‘a speeding train at a turning point’: after a prolonged period of high-speed economic growth, Chinese society was experiencing unprecedented ecological pressures and environmental constraints, due to the emergence of serious problems such as soot pollution, ozone depletion, fine particulate matters, and volatile organic compounds. Therefore, in the last decade, we have witnessed a growing emphasis on the importance of re-balancing the economy, promoting sustainable growth, and accepting the ‘New Normal (xin changtai)’: a vision of a qualitatively different developmental pattern within the context of a softer, and perhaps more sustainable, pace of growth.
During the course of this week, we will try to understand what appears to be a shift in the Chinese state’s vision of prosperity, progressively moving from the primary objective of improving the ‘material civilisation’, through the ‘spiritual civilization’, to the promotion of the ‘political civilization’, and finally the construction of the ‘ecological civilization’. Does this indicate a reassessment of the GDP logic of economic growth at all costs, and possibly the necessity to beyond the one-dimensional economic ideology of modernisation development? Is there also a lesson for the rest of the world?
The concept of eco-civilization seems to be linked to the growing awareness of the fact that improvements in environmental protection are essential to economic development. We will ask ourselves the following questions: Can the campaign to ‘Advance Ecological Civilization and Build a Beautiful China’ (Xi, 2014), point in the direction of the necessity to move away from a dominant pattern of full-scale urbanization, which has often prioritized the building of grandiose cities of spectacle as opposed to liveable cities where human beings want to live? Can we draw a connection between eco-civilization and eco-socialism, and therefore address China’s urban challenges as social, as well as environmental, and intrinsically human?
TUESDAY 15 FEBRUARY / 11AM–1PM / BOOK HERE
Professor Maurizio Marinelli, History
Since the beginning of the economic reforms in 1978, rapid industrialization, extensive land development and full-scale urbanization have been the priorities of the Chinese government’s policies. For more than forty years, the Chinese economy has registered growth at an annual average of 9.8%. In 2012, however, it became clear that China was ‘a speeding train at a turning point’: after a prolonged period of high-speed economic growth, Chinese society was experiencing unprecedented ecological pressures and environmental constraints, due to the emergence of serious problems such as soot pollution, ozone depletion, fine particulate matters, and volatile organic compounds. Therefore, in the last decade, we have witnessed a growing emphasis on the importance of re-balancing the economy, promoting sustainable growth, and accepting the ‘New Normal (xin changtai)’: a vision of a qualitatively different developmental pattern within the context of a softer, and perhaps more sustainable, pace of growth.
During the course of this week, we will try to understand what appears to be a shift in the Chinese state’s vision of prosperity, progressively moving from the primary objective of improving the ‘material civilisation’, through the ‘spiritual civilization’, to the promotion of the ‘political civilization’, and finally the construction of the ‘ecological civilization’. Does this indicate a reassessment of the GDP logic of economic growth at all costs, and possibly the necessity to beyond the one-dimensional economic ideology of modernisation development? Is there also a lesson for the rest of the world?
The concept of eco-civilization seems to be linked to the growing awareness of the fact that improvements in environmental protection are essential to economic development. We will ask ourselves the following questions: Can the campaign to ‘Advance Ecological Civilization and Build a Beautiful China’ (Xi, 2014), point in the direction of the necessity to move away from a dominant pattern of full-scale urbanization, which has often prioritized the building of grandiose cities of spectacle as opposed to liveable cities where human beings want to live? Can we draw a connection between eco-civilization and eco-socialism, and therefore address China’s urban challenges as social, as well as environmental, and intrinsically human?
