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This paper uses the perspective of state entrepreneurialism to explore China's environmental governance. The perspective illustrates how the Chinese state maintains its centrality, combining environmentalism and developmentalism while deploying flexible market development tools. This paper examines the Chengdu park-city model, an exemplar President Xi Jinping endorsed and widely emulated in China. The model combines the development of industrial and ecological spaces. It aims to deliver the central government's vision for ecological civilisation and the local government's economic development strategy. The development tools include land consolidation, financial mobilisation and an economic strategy that attempts to introduce 'urban scenes' into ecological spaces. This ecologically oriented development approach is more state-centred, contrasting with the neoliberal green growth machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long tradition of constitutionalising environmental protection in the People's Republic of China ('China'). This is illustrated, for example, by the constitutionalisation of the need to construct 'ecological civilisation' – a set of values and development concepts included in 2018 as part of constitutional amendments. Yet, the Constitution of China is often described as a constitution without constitutionalism. This article examines the constitutional environmental provisions in China, as well as the underpinning constitutional theories, to demonstrate how China enjoys environmental constitutionalism. This version of constitutionalism, however, is absent of rights and overwhelmingly enforced through state-based approaches, which means that it is distinct from the rights-based and courts-centred versions of liberal constitutionalism. This study thus exemplifies how constitutional practices may adopt different formulations and environmental constitutionalism exists without being committed to liberal principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on promotional materials in 2007–2008 and in 2021–2022, this article examines both Olympics to explore how the state has evolved in its governmental rationalities, and the related cultural and political implications. The 2022 Winter Games, despite its comparatively low profile and challenges posed by Covid-19, provided the Chinese state with a key moment to advance its confidence doctrine. Three discourses were mobilised pertaining to, first, the CCP's superb leadership and problem-solving skills; second, China's mega-infrastructure; and, third, created + made in China. The 2022 Olympics thus mobilised three confidence-driven discourses: leadership confidence, techno-scientific confidence, and creative confidence. In doing so, the 2022 Olympics envisioned, narrated, and materialised the popular discursive signifiers – technology, green and sustainability, and the future – the authorities already actively promoted in its political initiatives and policies. This contributed to the inward-oriented beliefs of self-reliance and self-improvement. Where we witnessed in 2008 a sense of curiosity and openness, within China and the world at large, we now face the complexities, dangers, and cultural essentialism, if not narcissism, of a confident China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the energy–economy–environment–society (3E1S) system theory, this paper constructed a comprehensive evaluation system for the coordinated development of China's ecological civilisation construction using panel data from 31 provinces and cities from 2005 to 2020, which is specifically divided into four sub-systems, namely, energy, economy, environment, and society, and covers 10 ordinal covariates and 40 ordinal variable indicators. In terms of measurement and evaluation methods, this paper adopted the composite system synergy model to measure the level of coordinated development of ecological civilisation construction of the country as a whole and 31 provinces and cities and adopted Arcgis maps, standard deviation ellipses, kernel density curves, and Theil index methods to explore the spatial-temporal evolution characteristics and regional differences in the level of coordinated development of ecological civilisation construction. It was found that the coordinated development level of China's ecological civilisation construction increased year by year from 2005 to 2020, with the most obvious upward trend from 2011 to 2015, with an average increase of 26.5%. Secondly, the spatial distribution pattern of the coordinated development level of China's ecological civilisation construction was relatively stable, basically showing a dominant southwest–northeast direction, but the spatial centre of gravity shows a trajectory shifting towards the southwest. Finally, there were large regional differences in the level of coordinated development of China's ecological civilisation, with an overall decreasing regional pattern of "Central-Northeast-East-West". However, the overall differences among the four regions showed a decreasing trend. The overall differences among the four regions were mainly intra-regional, with the western region having the greatest intra-regional differences and contributing to the overall differences. Although this paper takes China as a case study, its research methodology and conclusions can provide references for the construction of ecological civilisation and green sustainable development in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an examination of the unified efforts by China's central authorities and the judiciary in the crackdown on crypto mining within the country. It discusses the environmental ramifications of crypto mining and traces its development in China, highlighting the resource-intensive nature of the process. Crypto mining risks China's national objectives of promoting high-quality economic and social development, as well as industrial optimisation, energy conservation and emissions reduction. The central government's commitment to climate goals and ecological civilisation, coupled with the perceived minimal economic benefits and substantial environmental damage caused by crypto mining, led to the issuance of the Notice on Rectifying Mining Activities of Virtual Currencies in September 2021. This article discusses the implications of the Notice and how it has been implemented at both national and local levels by the administrative authorities. With reference to typical cases, it examines how the judiciary in delivering judgments has kept in line with the spirit of the Notice by analysing mining-related civil disputes as they arise in courts and reflects on the interplay of legal and administrative measures in shaping a sustainable and environmentally conscious approach to emerging technologies in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological crisis is related to religion that shapes the values, but its decisive factor is the inherent contradiction between the selfish logic of capital proliferation and the social public nature of the environment. The fundamental way to solve the ecological crisis is the domestic social reform, the coordination of international relations and the continuous development of science and technology. Guided by the social public agencies and scientific methods, religion can play a secondary constructive role in building the pro-ecological humanistic environment. Contribution: It is as I have known perhaps the initial attempt to deal with the question between religion and conservation from the perspective of Marxism, as a response to the colleagues from the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological crisis is related to religion that shapes the values, but its decisive factor is the inherent contradiction between the selfish logic of capital proliferation and the social public nature of the environment. The fundamental way to solve the ecological crisis is the domestic social reform, the coordination of international relations and the continuous development of science and technology. Guided by the social public agencies and scientific methods, religion can play a secondary constructive role in building the pro-ecological humanistic environment. Contribution: It is as I have known perhaps the initial attempt to deal with the question between religion and conservation from the perspective of Marxism, as a response to the colleagues from the West.

Contextual economics weaves together aspects of orthodox and heterodox economics theories (e.g. feminist, ecological, Keynesian and Marxist economics) in such a way that (re)interprets formal economic models within changing social, historical and environmental contexts. Drawing from the work of Julie Nelson, Kate Raworth and process philosophers, this paper conceptualises the contextual economic paradigm as nesting static abstractions within changing contexts. This brings into question the static metaphysics assumed by mainstream neoclassical economics, and presents an alternative basis for economics arising from processrelational metaphysics. This leads to an economics that: situates the economy as a subsystem of society and ecosystems; replaces Homo economicus with persons-in-communities; and redirects economic policies from profit and GDP growth to purpose and improving wellbeing. This shift in thinking, metaphysics and economics--nesting static in processes--is posited as a critical reorientation of economic decision-making for personal and planetary wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, people tended to ignore the carrying capacity of the environment, resources, ecology and other natural systems, and also ignore the resource and environmental costs and natural costs incurred by economic growth, which eventually leads to the degradation of natural ecological environment and the decline of residents' health. The results show that the pollution indexes of environmental art design range from 0.007 (comprehensiveness) to 0.912 (economic value), and those of ecological protection strategy range from 0.113 (industrial development) to 0.704 (innovative design); the carrying capacities of environmental art design range from 0.010 (space arrangement) to 0.684 (sustainability) and those of ecological protection strategy range from 0.124 (social value) to 0.938 (industrial development); the environment-protection factor of environmental art design range from 0.085 (sustainability) to 0.544 (land use) and those of ecological protection strategy range from 0.005 (aesthetic value) to 0.937 (concept presentation). Therefore, the arts and crafts in ecological environment construction in the new era can effectively and scientifically implement and carry out the landscape-site selection, material selection, land use, concept presentation, space planning, innovative design and so on under the guidance of ecological civilisation concept. The research results of this paper provide a reference for further research on the analysis of the importance of arts and crafts in the construction of an ecological environment in the new era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid and late 19th century, people have paid more and more attention to the ecological environment, and environmental awareness and behaviour have been gradually strengthened. The global environmental protection movement is rising daily, and environmental protection will become the focus of human attention in the 21st century. Accelerate the establishment and improvement of the system and mechanism of land and space development, resource conservation and utilisation, and ecological preservation of the environment in the system of ecological civilisation, and promote the formation of a new pattern of harmonious development between man and nature and modernisation. Although China has formulated policies and regulations on environmental protection in outdoor sports development, environmental protection is grim due to problems such as insufficient government supervision, weak public awareness of environmental protection, and relatively backward environmental protection concepts and management methods. During the visit, outdoor sports lovers and club leaders were interviewed. In this context, with the continuous development of outdoor mountain sports driven by the improvement of people's pursuit of life, there began to be contradictions between outdoor mountain sports and the ecological preservation of the environment, which also became the cause of the author's concern and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) designated the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as a major up-and-coming tourist destination as part of a programme called 'Ecological Civilisation' (shengtai wenming 生态文明). As the crackdown on Turkic Muslims accelerated from 2017 onwards, more and more Uyghur villages and places from which Kazakhs and other pastoralist communities had been displaced in the name of 'ecological migration' were branded as locations for tourists to appreciate 'nature' and 'folklore'. This essay analyses land expropriation and labour injustice at these ecotourism sites from the angle of colonial racial capitalism and shows that the expansion of ecological capitalism in China remains hinged on the production of brutal economic inequalities and cycles of vulnerability among racialised and minoritised bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the case study of China's Great Yangtze River Protection Programme (GYRPP), this study employs the perspective of governmentality to scrutinise how sociotechnical imaginary produces conservation-development nexus critically. By drawing on a large amount of literature, which conceptualises the governance of nature as rooted in power relations, this study opens up our views on the sociotechnical imaginary in the governance of nature. Through a combination of document analysis of Chinese policies and semi-structured interviews, this study argues that the GYRPP mobilised a series of techniques and practices of green governmentality, and finally formed new identities by problematising and visualising the conservation-development nexus. Moreover, China's GYRPP is not a single-dimensional strategy. It attempts to translate and coordinate ecological knowledge through the sociotechnical imaginary of ecological civilisation, and ultimately turn nature into a governable and manageable object. Finally, ecological civilisation becomes a concrete narrative and practice of China's future sociotechnical imaginary to shape China as a leader in sustainable development. • How sociotechnical imaginary produces conservation-development nexus is examined. • GYRPP mobilised a series of techniques and practices of green governmentality. • New identities are formed by problematising and visualising the nexus. • GYRPP translate and coordinate knowledge through ecological civilisation imaginary. • Ecological civilisation becomes an imaginary to shape China as a global leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the climate crisis intensifies, overlapping with the emergence of a lethal virus, and a planet poisoning economy, questions regarding thinking-and-doing transition become increasingly urgent. In this article, we explore the concept of "ecological civilisation" (EcoCiv) as a productive conjunction of Chinese concepts and ways of thinking that precede China's encounter with Western modernity, and their re-reading and revision from a post-Western modernity lens. China's role in any possible global transition to sustainability is unquestionably central -- yet curiously neglected in transition studies. At the same time the official project of EcoCiv is in fact emerging as the very opposite of its proclaimed spirit. The article offers a reconceptualisation of shengtai wenming (ecological civilisation) as a paradigm shift to life-ising the economy (and society) instead of economising life. From this altered perspective, the article presents and discusses preliminary evidence of a largely neglected, but potentially significant, bottom-up, extra-state dynamism in contemporary China that entails both elements and principles for a genuinely ecological, trans-modern civilisation. It concludes with reflections on the resulting change in agenda, not least for transition studies, outlining a set of four principles of doing shengtai wenming -- i.e. of life-ising transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese terraforming projects in the South China Sea have been condemned as geopolitically and ecologically destabilising. Following years of escalating construction and tourism initiatives, China pivoted in January 2019 by announcing ecosystem restoration efforts on several terraformed islands. Days later, the Chinese National Space Agency made the first soft landing on the far side of the moon, carrying with it a micro-ecosystem of living seeds and insect eggs. The micro-ecosystem sprouted the first plant on the moon, whose brief lifespan was met with rapt attention by the Chinese public as it disseminated across the national mediascape. This article contends that terraforming efforts in the South China Sea and the Chang'e 4 lunar biosphere project are related material-symbolic instantiations of a uniquely Chinese sociotechnical imaginary. Prevailing interpretations of Chinese island-building, outer space ventures and ecological civilisation tend to construe Beijing's intentions as primarily antagonistic. These accounts are useful yet insufficient for comprehending China's terraforming projects on Earth and beyond. The authors instead refigure terraformation as an imaginative, material and bio-geophysical process enacted in the globalising pursuit of new Chinese horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an ideological examination of China's ecological civilisation initiative with respect to its globalisation agenda. The basic argument is that the Chinese state's eco-civilisation project is an open-ended, statist technocratic bricolage that appropriates a philosophy of human -- nature harmony and facilitates a reformed communism intended to enchant both domestic and global audiences with a set of human universal values. The article considers eco-civilisation to be technically devised as an attractive initiative packed with the Chinese state's propagated universal values without a specific manual of operations. It is a one-size-fits-all concept but provides enough room for creative tailoring under specific circumstances in different geographical, cultural, economic and political contexts. In the course of delivering this argument, the article discusses how eco-civilisation is domestically and internationally promoted and how it is an inherent part of the renewed but reformed communism of the Chinese state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the climate crisis intensifies, overlapping with the emergence of a lethal virus, and a planet poisoning economy, questions regarding thinking-and-doing transition become increasingly urgent. In this article, we explore the concept of “ecological civilisation” (EcoCiv) as a productive conjunction of Chinese concepts and ways of thinking that precede China’s encounter with Western modernity, and their re-reading and revision from a post-Western modernity lens. China’s role in any possible global transition to sustainability is unquestionably central – yet curiously neglected in transition studies. At the same time the official project of EcoCiv is in fact emerging as the very opposite of its proclaimed spirit. The article offers a reconceptualisation of shengtai wenming (ecological civilisation) as a paradigm shift to life-ising the economy (and society) instead of economising life. From this altered perspective, the article presents and discusses preliminary evidence of a largely neglected, but potentially significant, bottom-up, extra-state dynamism in contemporary China that entails both elements and principles for a genuinely ecological, trans-modern civilisation. It concludes with reflections on the resulting change in agenda, not least for transition studies, outlining a set of four principles of doing shengtai wenming – i.e. of life-ising transition.

It has been more than two years since the publication of our jointly written book, China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet. Since then, multiple developments have confirmed and strengthened our core thesis that China’s “ecological civilisation” framework and programmes serve not only to achieve lower carbon and other environmental goals but also to strengthen the hand of the state over individuals and communities – and even to help export the state’s model of authoritarian governance. This short essay is intended to update this argument and to provide an overview of recent developments with respect to China’s carbon policies, pandemic response and international investment on the Belt and Road.

This article offers an ideological examination of China’s ecological civilisation initiative with respect to its globalisation agenda. The basic argument is that the Chinese state’s eco-civilisation project is an open-ended, statist technocratic bricolage that appropriates a philosophy of human­–nature harmony and facilitates a reformed communism intended to enchant both domestic and global audiences with a set of human universal values. The article considers eco-civilisation to be technically devised as an attractive initiative packed with the Chinese state’s propagated universal values without a specific manual of operations. It is a one-size-fits-all concept but provides enough room for creative tailoring under specific circumstances in different geographical, cultural, economic and political contexts. In the course of delivering this argument, the article discusses how eco-civilisation is domestically and internationally promoted and how it is an inherent part of the renewed but reformed communism of the Chinese state.

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This paper engages with China's currently most prominent environmental policy concept: ecological civilisation. As this concept is becoming a cornerstone of China's strategy of socialist modernisation, we examine whether and how the term can enable ecological protection in China and beyond. We argue that ecological civilisation, while a recently emerged discourse, builds on established environmental governance practices in China that shape its manifestation in political action. To illustrate this argument, we explain how two philosophical principles central to ecological civilisation discourse, "holism" and "harmony", have been expressed in environmental political practice in Communist China. Building on this analysis, we suggest that ecological civilisation discourse may have a profound impact in certain policy domains (e.g., resource conservation and ecologi cal conservation redlines), but limited transformative capacity in others (e.g., environmental litigation and resource extraction). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with China’s currently most prominent environmental policy concept: ecological civilisation. As this concept is becoming a cornerstone of China’s strategy of socialist modernisation, we examine whether and how the term can enable ecological protection in China and beyond. We argue that ecological civilisation, while a recently emerged discourse, builds on established environmental governance practices in China that shape its manifestation in political action. To illustrate this argument, we explain how two philosophical principles central to ecological civilisation discourse, “holism” and “harmony”, have been expressed in environmental political practice in Communist China. Building on this analysis, we suggest that ecological civilisation discourse may have a profound impact in certain policy domains (e.g., resource conservation and ecologi­cal conservation redlines), but limited transformative capacity in others (e.g., environmental litigation and resource extraction).

This paper examines the recent green turn in China by investigating a large-scale urban greenway project. Using the perspective of the socio-ecological fix, we demonstrate that multi-scalar states strive to upgrade environmental quality. Specifically, the local state seizes the opportunity for 'ecological civilisation' envisioned by the central state to carry out green infrastructure development. We reveal complex motivations to incorporate ecological changes into entrepreneurial urban governance instead of encroaching greenspace for economic growth. Our state-centred analysis reveals that such an environmental strategy, the making of Chinese green urbanism, is promoted like a political mission, despite its operation by the development corporation. We argue that, while the socio-ecological fix facilitates capital accumulation, its deployment must be understood through state politics and actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]