Wang Qing: Accurately Grasping the Ecosocial Value Significance and Logical Rationale of Chinese-path Modernization
The Report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC proposed: “Chinese-path modernization is the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature.” Harmony between humanity and nature centrally summarizes the eco-civilizational value orientation of Chinese-path modernization. From the dimension of ecological civilization, it clarifies that Chinese-path modernization is neither a traditional industrial modernization model of “civilization without ecology,” nor is it a carbon copy of Western “ecological modernization” that follows the path of “pollute first, treat later.” One important aspect of why Chinese-path modernization constitutes a distinct “path” lies in its exemplary significance within the ecological dimension. Chinese-path modernization follows the objective historical laws of the development of green productive forces, continuously improves new relations of production that are better suited to the development of green productive forces, and consistently upholds the value orientation of ecological people’s livelihoods [1]. It actively promotes a modern transformation characterized by the synergistic development of digitalization and ecologization, thereby possessing value significance and comparative advantages that the Western modernization model cannot reach.
Lucid Waters and Lush Mountains: Effectively Realizing the Organic Unity of Ecological Protection and Economic Development
Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized and elaborated on the important concept that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets,” pointing out a new path for achieving the synergistic symbiosis of development and protection. The ecological environment is the vital foundation for sustainable economic and social development. “Lucid waters and lush mountains” are not only the ecological environment necessary for human survival but are also the source of material wealth and use-value; they constitute the “natural productive forces of labor.” Therefore, “protecting the ecological environment is protecting the productive forces, and improving the ecological environment is developing the productive forces.” Chinese-path modernization, characterized by harmony between humanity and nature, takes the high-quality development of green productive forces as an important driver. To achieve this, we must transform the ecological resource advantages of “lucid waters and lush mountains” into the economic developmental momentum of “invaluable assets.” We must treat the ecological environment as an intrinsic factor of the productive forces, protect and increase the value of natural assets and natural capital, and balance the economic and ecological values of the natural environment. We must rely on scientific and technological innovation to reduce resource consumption and pollution emissions, produce more and better ecological products, and achieve the unity of economic, social, and ecological benefits.
General Secretary Xi Jinping noted: “Green development is the defining feature of high-quality development, and new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces.” This important judgment profoundly interprets the relationship between new quality productive forces and green productive forces, pointing out the important direction and practical path for developing green productive forces. The high-quality development of green productive forces relies on the innovation-driven power of green, low-carbon, and circular technologies. In this sense, green productive forces are essentially a type of new quality productive forces—an advanced productive force that takes innovation-drive as its core, high-quality development as its qualitative state, and relies on revolutionary breakthroughs in technology to achieve the optimized configuration of production factors, the transformation and upgrading of production momentum, and a significant leap in production efficiency. The Report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC emphasized: “Promoting green and low-carbon economic and social development is a key link in achieving high-quality development.” That is to say, green productive forces, characterized by “green, low-carbon, and circular” qualities, have become the important practical foundation for high-quality development. Driving high-quality development with green productive forces will be a broad and profound systemic change powered by innovation, characterized by coordination, defined by greening, patterned by openness, and aimed at sharing.
To advance Chinese-path modernization through the high-quality development of green productive forces, we must, first, replace extensive development based on factor inputs with intensive development driven by innovation, promoting industrial transformation and upgrading and developing emerging green industries. The success or failure of ecological civilization construction depends largely on the ecological transformation of the mode of economic development and the green adjustment of the industrial structure. Economic development cannot “drain the pond to catch the fish” (jú zé ér yú) [2] regarding resources and the environment, nor can ecological protection “climb a tree to seek a fish” (yuán mù qiú yú) [3] by abandoning economic development. Taking the high-quality development of green productive forces as its foothold, Chinese-path modernization must achieve mutual reinforcement between ecological protection and economic development through “industrial ecologization and ecological industrialization.” Second, we must give full play to the decisive role of market mechanisms in resource allocation. Through top-level design and holistic planning, we should cultivate and develop a unified national ecological and environmental market, promote market-based trading of carbon emission rights, water rights, energy-use rights, and pollution rights, and advance the construction of industry standards and quality systems for ecological products. We must use a unified and improved market mechanism to break down regional barriers in the ecological environment and promote the free flow and efficient allocation of natural resources and ecological environmental factors across different regions and industries. Third, we must actively release the bonding role of capital in gathering and allocating various production factors, curb the disorderly expansion of capital, and regulate and guide the orderly development of capital, making it a powerful driver for the high-quality development of green productive forces. Fourth, we must succeed in the development and cultivation of green human resources, training scientists and workers with ecological awareness and green skills. Through improved green management mechanisms, we should enhance the ecologization level of corporate production management and operations, effectively ensuring that enterprises play their role as primary actors in the process of green development.
Systems and Mechanisms: The Fundamental Guarantee for Achieving Green Development and Harmony Between Humanity and Nature
In July 2023, during an inspection in Sichuan, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: “To grasp the construction of ecological civilization, we must build a solid institutional framework, ensure effective institutional execution, and simultaneously mobilize the enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity of the broad masses of the people to consolidate and develop the achievements of ecological civilization construction in the New Era.” Chinese-path modernization characterized by harmony between humanity and nature requires further comprehensively deepening reform to liberate green productive forces, and even more so, it requires a continuous improvement of the systems and mechanisms suited to the development of green productive forces to stimulate the social vitality of innovation-drive.
Specifically, providing institutional guarantees for green development through further comprehensively deepening reform means further improving the systems and mechanisms for implementing the concept that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.” First, we must continue to improve the legal and institutional system for ecological environmental governance, using “the strictest systems and the tightest rule of law” to protect the ecological environment and enhance the modernization of ecological governance. On one hand, with “tightest” as the goal, we must strengthen institutional innovation. On the basis of the “Four Beams and Eight Pillars” [4], we should refine institutional mechanisms such as accountability for ecological governance, performance assessment for ecological governance, collaborative governance of environmental pollution, and coordination of ecological security work, weaving the web of institutional protection more tightly to form a scientifically regulated ecological governance system. On the other hand, with “strictest” as the goal, we must ensure institutional execution, further improve the inspection mechanism for ecological environmental protection, and use systematic implementation and oversight mechanisms to prevent “institutional idling” and the “broken windows effect” [5], effectively transforming institutional advantages into ecological governance efficacy. Second, we must establish and improve the basic systems of ecological civilization that interface with a high-level socialist market economy system to guarantee the high-quality development of the ecological economy. On one hand, according to market requirements, we should improve natural resource asset rights systems, asset management systems, and ownership agency mechanisms that are characterized by “clear attribution, explicit rights and responsibilities, strict protection, smooth circulation, and effective supervision.” We should also improve trading systems for water rights, energy-use rights, pollution rights, and carbon emission rights. On the other hand, we must treat the mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products as the key to implementing the “lucid waters and lush mountains” concept, continuously improving mechanisms for the survey, monitoring, value evaluation, and operational development of ecological products to promote the economization of ecology. Third, we must establish and improve systems and mechanisms that encourage green production and low-carbon lifestyles, further accelerate the green transformation of fiscal, taxation, financial, and pricing policies and standard systems, and further improve incentive mechanisms for green consumption and green procurement, as well as guarantee mechanisms for comprehensive resource conservation and recycling.
The Fusion of "Life" and "Livelihood": Profoundly Demonstrating the People-Centered Standpoint of Harmony Between Humanity and Nature
“The environment is people’s livelihood; lush mountains are beauty; and blue skies are happiness. Developing the economy is for the sake of the people's livelihood, and protecting the ecological environment is likewise for the sake of the people's livelihood.” General Secretary Xi Jinping has integrated the ecological environment with public goods, people’s well-being, the better life, and common prosperity. He has not only incorporated a good ecological environment and high-quality ecological products into the scope of people’s livelihoods—making ecological wealth an important component of the people's needs for a better life and enriching the New Era connotation of well-rounded human development—but has also included the fair distribution of ecological products and the inclusive sharing of environmental rights into the scope of social justice. This achieves the unity of ecological justice and environmental justice and expands the scientific connotation of socialist common prosperity.
To advance Chinese-path modernization characterized by harmony between humanity and nature, we must take the well-being of the people as our fundamental purpose and treat livelihood construction as a foundational project, adhering to the principle of “ecology for the people’s benefit, ecology for the people’s gain, and ecology for the people.” First, we must establish a scientific understanding of ecological livelihoods and a value orientation of ecological justice throughout society. Guided by the value principles of “harmony” and “well-being,” we must properly handle the relationship between economic development and ecological protection and resolve the problems of unbalanced environmental rights and insufficient ecological development between regions, between urban and rural areas, and among social groups. Second, we must make the ecological “cake” bigger by developing green productive forces. Through green, low-carbon, and circular development, we should create a beautiful ecological environment, produce better ecological products, accumulate more ecological wealth, and maintain stable ecological security. On the basis of meeting the people's material and cultural needs, we should continuously elevate their pursuit of a beautiful ecological life. Third, we must divide the ecological “cake” well through “three distributions” [6]. We must emphasize efficiency, relying on market mechanisms to encourage various production factors to participate actively in the distribution of ecological benefits; we must place even greater emphasis on fairness, relying on government taxation, fiscal transfer payments, social security, and other policy tools to correct irrationalities in the market-based distribution of ecological benefits; and we must rely on the power of culture to encourage social organizations, enterprises, and individuals to voluntarily develop ecological public welfare undertakings. This will allow all people to share in the achievements of ecological civilization construction and enhance the people’s sense of ecological gain, happiness, and security.
Synergy of "Digital" and "Eco": Creating a Modern Transformation of Synergistic Digital and Ecological Development
Chinese-path modernization is a smart modernization relying on the construction of a digital ecological civilization. At the 2023 National Conference on Ecological and Environmental Protection, General Secretary Xi Jinping explicitly proposed: “Deepen the application of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, build a digital governance system for a Beautiful China, and build a green and smart digital ecological civilization.” Digital ecological civilization fully expresses the objective logical requirement of Chinese-path modernization to create a synergistic transformation of digitalization and ecologization. This synergy both points out the green development direction of Chinese-path modernization and nurtures its smart momentum. Leading the digital transformation of Chinese-path modernization with ecologization, and empowering its ecological transformation with digitalization—with the two resonating and advancing in coordination—has become an important way to advance modernization characterized by harmony between humanity and nature.
Digital ecological civilization possesses advantages that traditional industrial civilization cannot match. To advance harmony between humanity and nature through digital ecological civilization, Chinese-path modernization must, first, rely on green and smart technological innovation to enhance the precision of ecological governance. We must build comprehensive, whole-process digital platforms to promote information connectivity and data sharing, creating an integrated big data system for the ecological environment. Meanwhile, we should use AI and big data to achieve dynamic perception and real-time monitoring of ecological environmental information across all regions and factors, tailoring measures to local conditions and specific categories. Second, we must rely on green and smart technological innovation to strengthen the systematic nature of ecological civilization construction. We must use advanced technologies like digital twins and simulation to fully grasp the structure, hierarchy, and dynamic evolution of ecosystems, systematically evaluate ecological quality and trends, and formulate systematic solutions for ecological governance. Simultaneously, we must use the advantages of cloud computing and data sharing to enhance the ability and effectiveness of collaborative governance among the government, enterprises, and society, systematically advancing the coordinated development of the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan. Third, we must rely on green and smart technological innovation to increase the openness and interactivity between humans and natural ecosystems. We must use modern communication technology to create an open and transparent information environment and build an open and shared big data ecological system, allowing diverse subjects to maintain good and orderly interaction. Furthermore, we must empower green, low-carbon, and circular development with open and shared digital technology to promote the healthy and orderly development of natural ecosystems, achieving the sustainable development of the metabolic process between humanity and nature.
(The author is the Party Secretary and a Professor at Ludong University) Source: Guangming Daily (Note: Original source in prompt cited China Social Sciences Net/Social Sciences in China Press) February 6, 2025