Chinese Urban Transformation

5Understanding the Environmental Agenda

The Background of Ecological Civilisation

Macro Level: A National Philosophical Mindset

In 2007, at the Seventeenth National Congress of the CPC, the CPC stated that for the foreseeable future, China’s economic model would be premised on the desire to create an ‘Ecological Civilisation’ (shengtai wenming, 生态文明). Soon after, the China Daily newspaper reported that ecological civilisation is ‘a future-oriented guiding principle based on the perception of the extremely high price we have paid for our economic miracle’.¹ Put simply, the demands for an ecological civilisation, it said, were meant to herald a new epoch where social and economic development would continue but much more consideration would be ...