Ke Changwan: Achieving Modernization Characterized by Harmonious Coexistence Between Humanity and Nature
Chinese-path modernization is the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature; fortifying ecological security barriers is an inherent requirement and crucial guarantee of Chinese-path modernization. The "Recommendations of the CPC Central Committee on Formulating the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development," adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, is grounded in the strategic height of "accelerating the comprehensive green transition of economic and social development and building a Beautiful China." It puts forward the developmental requirements to "fortify ecological security barriers and enhance the momentum of green development." Standing at the critical juncture of the commencement of the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" (2026–2030), deeply studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, safeguarding the ecological environment with bottom-line thinking [1], and coordinating protection and development with a systems perspective are of great and far-reaching strategic significance for consolidating the ecological foundation of the country's long-term peace and stability and successfully traversing the road of Chinese-path modernization characterized by harmony between humanity and nature.
Consolidating the Ecological Foundation of National Security and the Sustainable Development of the Chinese Nation
Ecological security is the basic prerequisite for human survival and development, and an important guarantee for national stability, social tranquility, and people's happiness. Within the framework of the Holistic Approach to National Security [2], ecological security has become a strategic, fundamental, and overall issue concerning the long-term peace and stability of the country and the sustainable development of the nation; it is a "top priority of the state" [3] that must be firmly upheld.
Ecological security is an important component of the Holistic Approach to National Security, concerning the sustainable development of the nation and the long-term peace and stability of the country. General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out: "We must implement the Holistic Approach to National Security, actively and effectively respond to various risks and challenges, and ensure that the natural environment and conditions upon which we rely for survival and development are not threatened or destroyed." Currently, China's development is in a period where strategic opportunities coexist with risks and challenges, and uncertain and unpredictable factors are increasing. Traditional security and non-traditional security are intertwined, and the risks and hidden dangers in the field of the ecological environment exhibit characteristics of complexity, connectivity, and transmissibility. Issues such as tightening resource constraints, increasing biosafety risks, and the intensifying impact of climate change may all form rigid constraints on economic and social development. Maintaining ecological security is, in essence, maintaining the spatial, material, and environmental foundations of national development; it is safeguarding the homeland upon which the masses rely for survival. Only by ensuring ecological environmental security, ecosystem stability, and the sustainable use of resources can national security have solid support and modernization construction have continuous momentum.
Guarding the security bottom line for the construction of a Beautiful China is an inherent requirement and important prerequisite for promoting Chinese-path modernization. The "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Comprehensively Promoting the Construction of a Beautiful China" devoted a special chapter to deploying the task of "firmly guarding the security bottom line for the construction of a Beautiful China." It made systematic arrangements across five aspects: improving the national ecological security system, ensuring nuclear and radiation safety, strengthening biosafety management, effectively responding to the adverse effects and risks of climate change, and strictly preventing and controlling environmental risks. This profoundly reflects the CPC Central Committee’s scientific grasp of the laws of ecological security. Facing a complex and severe ecological and environmental situation, we must strengthen bottom-line thinking, enhance our awareness of potential dangers, and always plan and promote ecological security within the overall context of national security. We must use ecological security to guarantee territorial security, resource security, food security, economic security, and social security, making a good ecological environment the solid bedrock of the country's long-term peace and stability and the inexhaustible driver of the nation's sustainable development. Only in this way can we provide a solid guarantee of ecological security for national development and national rejuvenation, ensuring that modernization construction moves forward steadily and reaches far on a track supported by the carrying capacity of resources and the environment.
Strictly Adhering to the Concept of Harmony Between Humanity and Nature
To fortify national ecological security barriers, we must resolve issues of concept, direction, and value. The fact that ecological civilization construction in the New Era has achieved historic, transformative, and comprehensive changes is fundamentally due to the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization. To promote the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature, we must firmly grasp the concept of harmony between humanity and nature, adhere to the correct direction, and ensure that the construction of ecological security barriers always advances along a scientific track.
Continually practice the "Two Mountains" theory [4] and adhere to the principles of prioritizing ecology and prioritizing protection. "Green waters and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains" profoundly reveals the dialectical unity between ecological environmental protection and economic and social development, pointing out a new path to achieve the synergistic symbiosis of development and protection. Adhering to ecological priority means always placing ecological protection first in development decisions, spatial layout, industrial selection, and project construction. Adhering to protection priority means resolutely abandoning growth models that damage or even destroy the ecological environment, and resolutely guarding the baseline for ecological function guarantee, the bottom line for environmental quality safety, and the upper limit for natural resource utilization. Only by unswervingly following the path of ecological priority and green development can we truly realize the benign interaction between high-quality development and high-level protection, providing lasting momentum for the construction of ecological security barriers.
Adhere to a systems perspective and coordinate the integrated protection and systematic governance of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and deserts. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the ecology is a unified natural system and an organic chain that is interdependent and closely linked. This important discourse provides a scientific methodology for ecological environmental governance. To promote ecological protection and the construction of ecological security barriers in the New Era, we must abandon fragmented governance models and persist in proceeding from the integrity of the ecosystem and the systematic nature of river basins. We must coordinate the areas above and below the mountains, above and beneath the ground, the land and the sea, and the upper and lower reaches of river basins. We must coordinate various ecological spaces such as forests, grasslands, wetlands, deserts, and oceans, and promote integrated protection, integrated restoration, and integrated governance. Through systematic governance, we can enhance the ecosystem's capacity for circulation, self-repair, and risk resistance, continuously improving the quality and stability of the ecosystem.
Plan development based on the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, and correctly handle major relationships such as that between high-quality development and high-level protection. The carrying capacity of resources and the environment is the objective upper limit of natural ecosystems and a rigid constraint on human activities. To promote modernization construction, we must take the resource and environmental carrying capacity as a prerequisite, reasonably determine the scale, structure, layout, and speed of development, and achieve a balance between population, economy, resources, and environment. At the National Conference on Ecological and Environmental Protection, General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly elucidated several major relationships [5] that need to be handled well in continuing to promote ecological civilization construction on the new journey. Among them, the relationship between high-quality development and high-level protection occupies the primary position. This reflects the dialectical wisdom and systematic governance logic of planning development based on resource and environmental carrying capacity, while unifying the persistence of ecological bottom lines with the realization of quality and efficiency improvements. At the same time, we must adhere to the unity of key breakthroughs and synergistic governance, and the unity of natural recovery and artificial restoration. We should guide ecological security practices with scientific methodology, achieving precision in policy implementation, targeted efforts, and synergistic forces, while continuously improving the systematic, holistic, and coordinated nature of ecological security governance.
Taking the Practical Path of Region-wide Synergy and Systematic Prevention and Control
Fortifying national ecological security barriers is a long-term and arduous systematic project. We must adhere to the unity of goal-orientation, problem-orientation, and result-orientation. Taking the spatial pattern as the basis, risk prevention and control as the key, the governance system as the guarantee, and global cooperation as an expansion, we must build an ecological security guarantee system that covers all regions, links all levels, is systematically complete, and is efficient in coordination. This will transform the strategic deployment of ecological security barriers into solid actions and actual results.
In terms of spatial layout, we must construct the "Three Regions and Four Belts" ecological security pattern and strictly observe the ecological protection red line. Grounded in China's ecological geographic layout and ecological security needs, we should accelerate the construction of the "Three Regions and Four Belts" ecological security pattern. This consists primarily of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecological barrier region, the Yellow River key ecological region, the Yangtze River key ecological region, and the Northeast Forest Belt, the Northern Sand-Prevention Belt, the Southern Hilly and Mountainous Belt, and the Coastal Belt. We must highlight the systematic protection of important ecological functional zones, major rivers, important wetlands, and biodiversity priority areas to ensure that ecological space is not compressed, ecological functions are not degraded, and ecological capacity is not reduced, thereby forming a solid, reliable, and region-wide ecological security skeleton. In terms of risk prevention and control, we must improve the ecological security system and strictly prevent and control environmental risks, biosafety risks, and climate security risks. We must fully implement the CPC Central Committee’s major deployments on maintaining ecological security, focusing on four key tasks: improving the ecological security system, strictly preventing environmental risks, strengthening biosafety management, and enhancing the capacity to adapt to climate change. Through all-process and whole-chain risk prevention and control, we must resolutely guard the bottom line of preventing major ecological environment incidents. In terms of governance guarantee, we must improve the legal, policy, monitoring, and emergency systems to elevate the modernization level of ecological security governance. We must persist in using the strictest systems and the most rigorous rule of law to protect the ecological environment. We should improve policy tools such as ecological protection compensation and ecological environment damage compensation, accelerate the establishment of a modern ecological environment monitoring system, and establish and improve emergency response and emergency material reserve systems to promote the modernization of the ecological environment governance system and governance capacity. Furthermore, we must promote the construction of a community of all life on Earth and actively participate in global ecological governance. China always takes the concept of a community with a shared future for humanity as its guide. While fortifying our own ecological security barriers, we actively participate in global ecological environmental governance, actively carry out international cooperation in ecological and environmental protection, and continuously promote global ecological governance toward a more fair, reasonable, and win-win direction.
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "We must stand at the height of maintaining national ecological security, the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, and being responsible for human civilization, strengthen ecological protection and restoration, and leave a clear-aired and verdant ecological space for future generations." Standing at a new historical starting point, we must deeply implement Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, adhere to the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature, and fortify ecological security barriers with a higher stance, a broader vision, and greater intensity. This will lay a solid ecological foundation for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation and contribute Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to the shared construction of a clean and beautiful world.