Jian Xiaowen: An Action Guide for Promoting the Green Transformation of Development Patterns
Development is the foundation and key to resolving all our country's problems, and high-quality development is the primary task for building a modern socialist country in all respects. The development philosophy determines the developmental results; the new development philosophy of innovation, coordination, greenness, openness, and sharing leads the solid advancement of China’s high-quality development. Within this framework, green development focuses on resolving the issue of harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature, and serves as the defining background for high-quality development. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee proposed to "accelerate the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development and build a Beautiful China." General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized the practice of the green development philosophy on multiple occasions, requiring that "the green development philosophy be integrated into the entire process and all aspects of economic and social development." This provides the fundamental guidance and an action plan for better meeting the people’s growing needs for a better life and accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development.
Drawing Lessons from Domestic and International Development Experiences
The key to achieving green development lies in correctly handling the relationship between economic development and ecological environmental protection. We must have both "gold and silver mountains" and "clear waters and lush mountains" [1]; we must both strictly hold the bottom line of ecological environmental protection—never trading the ecological environment for temporary economic growth—and also make full use of the ecological environment to continuously transform ecological advantages into developmental advantages. The green development philosophy did not emerge in a vacuum; it was formed on the basis of profoundly summarizing domestic and international development lessons and analyzing general global development trends. It possesses strong practical relevance and strategic leadership for promoting high-quality development.
Since the beginning of reform and opening up, China has created the two miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability, completing in several decades the industrialization process that Western developed countries took centuries to traverse. Comprehensive national strength and people’s living standards have been significantly improved. However, the traditional "high input, high consumption, high pollution, and low efficiency" extensive economic growth model also led to atmospheric, water, and soil pollution. Issues of uncoordinated, unbalanced, and unsustainable development became increasingly prominent, seriously constraining sustainable economic and social development and the further improvement of the people's living standards. Entering the New Era, China's economy has shifted from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development, making the task of promoting green development more important and urgent. The real-world situation dictates that we must correctly handle the relationship between economic development and ecological protection to achieve higher-quality and more sustainable development. Adhering to the green development philosophy not only helps restore and repair damaged ecological environments—supporting high-quality development with high-level protection—but also helps cultivate new industries and business forms, shaping new drivers and advantages for economic development. Furthermore, it accelerates the technological transformation of traditional industries and the green transformation of production methods, breaking through resource and environmental constraints to revitalize old growth drivers.
In the industrialization process of Western developed countries, the developmental path of "pollute first, treat later" created immense material wealth but also exacted a painful price. The "Eight Major Public Health Disasters" that occurred in Western countries last century, such as the Los Angeles photochemical smog, the London Great Smog, and the Minamata disease in Japan, had a huge impact on the environment and public health. These events forced the countries involved to invest massive sums in remediation and triggered profound reflections on the Western model of modernization. Currently, promoting green transformation has become a universal consensus in the international community. The United States, Japan, and many European countries have successively issued national strategies and plans, taking the development of green manufacturing as a key lever to win future competition. Emerging economies such as India and Brazil have also introduced corresponding green manufacturing development strategies based on their own characteristics. Against the backdrop of profound adjustments in the global economic landscape and development models, only by integrating the green development philosophy into every link of China’s economic and social development can we avoid the historical limitations and drawbacks of Western modernization. Only by developing a green economy and effectively improving green manufacturing to realize a transformation in development methods can we enhance economic resilience and win the initiative in development amidst fierce international competition.
Meeting the People’s Needs for a Beautiful Ecological Environment
The happiness and well-being of the people are the ultimate goal of high-quality development. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that "high-quality development is development that can well satisfy the people's ever-growing needs for a better life." Adhering to the green development philosophy, promoting the prevention and control of environmental pollution, and strengthening ecosystem protection can inject lasting momentum into high-quality development.
The ecological environment is a major political issue related to the Party's mission and purpose, as well as a major social issue related to the people’s livelihoods. On the new journey in the New Era, the horizontal factors, combination methods, and allocation efficiency of China's economic development have changed, with development requirements and conditions exhibiting new characteristics. In particular, the people's aspiration for a better life has shifted from "is there enough?" to "is it good enough?" The people's need for a beautiful environment is becoming more urgent; they expect to breathe fresh air, drink clean water, eat safe food, and live in habitable environments, with demands becoming more personalized and diverse. Currently, the structural, root-cause, and trend-based pressures on China's ecological environment have not been fundamentally alleviated. Ecological restoration and construction pressures remain high in some resource-dependent regions, and the development inertia and path dependency of traditional industries relying on resource inputs persist. Mechanisms for ecological value transformation, carbon sink trading, and ecological compensation still need improvement. How to ensure that the achievements of ecological civilization construction [2] better benefit all people has become a key issue that must be resolved to promote high-quality development. Adhering to the green development philosophy can better guide us in coordinating pollution control, ecological protection, and industrial structural adjustment. It further widens the channel for converting "clear waters and lush mountains" into "gold and silver mountains," advancing material civilization and ecological civilization in tandem, and allowing the people to tangibly feel the improvement in quality of life and economic benefits brought by environmental progress. One could say that green development is the vital link between improving the environment, meeting the people's needs for a better life, and achieving high-quality development.
Practicing the green development philosophy is both an important path for enhancing people’s well-being and a key focal point for achieving high-quality development. We must adhere to the people-centered development philosophy, implement the green development philosophy, and unswervingly follow the path of ecological priority and green development. We must resolutely reject development models that damage or destroy the environment and resolutely abandon the practice of sacrificing the environment for temporary, localized economic growth. We should actively build a production system for green, low-carbon, and circular development, continuously optimizing industrial, energy, and transportation structures to fundamentally resolve environmental pollution issues and improve ecological quality. We must continue to fight the tough battle of pollution prevention and control, focusing on enhancing the diversity, stability, and sustainability of ecosystems. We should speed up the resolution of prominent environmental problems that the people feel strongly about, providing more and better high-quality ecological products in areas such as food, housing, and transportation, so that the people can share in the beauty of nature, life, and living in a beautiful home. We must improve relevant systems and mechanisms, implementing a comprehensive compensation system that integrates vertical and horizontal approaches to promote benefit-sharing between protected and beneficiary regions. We should reasonably define ecological environmental rights, improve market trading mechanisms, and stimulate the enthusiasm of the entire society to participate in ecological protection. Exploring specific paths to realize the value of ecological products according to local conditions—using economic, legal, and other means—will facilitate the realization of ecological product value, ensuring that high-quality ecological products receive reasonable economic returns and that ecological civilization construction and economic development complement each other.
Promoting the Green Transformation of Development Methods
In the report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that "promoting the greening and decarbonization of economic and social development is a key link in achieving high-quality development." Green development is a transcendence of traditional development philosophies and an action guide for promoting the green transformation of development methods.
At present, China is still in the middle-to-late stages of industrialization and urbanization. There is a strong coupling between economic development, energy consumption, and carbon emissions. Achieving high-quality development faces issues such as rising labor costs and resource-environmental carrying capacities reaching their bottlenecks. There is an urgent need to accelerate the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. The green development philosophy emphasizes protection during development and development during protection, achieving harmony between economic social development and population, resources, and the environment. it requires a clear green orientation in industrial development and technological innovation, promoting a smooth transition between old and new growth drivers to achieve healthy economic and social development. Specifically, this can be understood from two aspects.
On the one hand, the green development philosophy leads the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure. The green development philosophy requires us to no longer follow the path of "hasty makeshift work" [3], "draining the pond to catch the fish" [4], or "GDP-only" fetishism, but rather to incorporate ecological benefits into the evaluation system for economic and social development. This restructuring of values can guide policy formulation and the flow of resources, promoting the vigorous development of various green emerging industries and the green transformation of traditional industries. At the same time, it can promote green changes in lifestyles, enhancing the whole society's awareness of conservation, environmental protection, and ecology. This makes green consumption and low-carbon travel a new fashion, activating the endogenous power of green transformation and forming a virtuous cycle where "demand pulls supply and supply creates demand," further accelerating industrial upgrading.
On the other hand, the development of new quality productive forces—as an inherent requirement for high-quality development and an important path for the synergistic promotion of carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and growth—cannot succeed without the guidance of the green development philosophy. New quality productive forces are, in essence, green productive forces, characterized by high technology, high efficiency, and high quality. A major goal of fostering and developing new quality productive forces is to achieve development with low resource consumption, low environmental pollution, and climate-friendliness. From this perspective, promoting green development is a basic requirement for fostering and developing new quality productive forces. Guided by the green development philosophy, we can promote the improvement of green standard systems across various fields and increase social demand for green products. Using standards and markets to drive technological iteration and upgrades provides an innovative direction and market basis for the development of new quality productive forces.
Promoting the greening and decarbonization of economic and social development requires implementing the green development philosophy in all fields and links, including production, distribution, circulation, and consumption. This ensures that economic and social development is built on a foundation of efficient resource utilization and strict ecological protection. We must comprehensively assess the impact of industrial layouts on energy and resource consumption and the environment. While accelerating the "intelligent transformation and digital transition" [5] of traditional industries, we should promote the development of green and low-carbon industries, encouraging the continuous emergence of new green and low-carbon technologies, business forms, and models. In the process of developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions, we must firmly establish the concept that protecting the ecological environment is protecting the productive forces, and improving the ecological environment is developing the productive forces. We must highlight the orientation of green development, taking whether it is conducive to green transformation as an important standard for judging and testing new quality productive forces. Through green technological innovation and the promotion of advanced technologies, we can drive the transformation of development methods and enhance the momentum of green development. We should increase institutional construction efforts, improving the evaluation and assessment system for ecological civilization goals that strengthens green development orientation. We must strictly implement the primary responsibility of enterprises and the regulatory responsibility of governments, building a system of fiscal, taxation, financial, investment, and price policies and standards conducive to green transformation. By strengthening publicity and education on the green development philosophy and guiding public and social organizations to participate, we can move toward a society where simple, moderate, green, low-carbon, and healthy lifestyles and consumption patterns become the norm, creating a favorable atmosphere for the entire society to jointly promote green development.