Harnessing the ecolo
President Xi’s beliefs on man-nature harmony guides
As planet Earth continues to face the degradation of biodiversity, President Xi Jinping envisions a homeland where man and nature can live in harmony, with economy and ecology thriving side by side.
“All beings flourish when they live in harmony and receive nourishment from nature,” Xi said in an address to a key United Nations conference on biodiversity protection via video link on Oct 12.
He announced a new set of measures, including earmarking 1.5 billion yuan ($233 million) for a new fund on biodiversity protection and saying the country encourages global participation in the fund.
The latest solutions proposed at the conference together with the country’s consistent efforts to remedy biodiversity loss reflect Xi’s thoughts on the relationship between humans and nature, which originate from his personal experiences, gained during his work at various posts, and draw inspiration from the Chinese culture and a realistic view of the world.
When he was 13, Xi once enjoyed swimming in the Lijiang River in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region with friends. He was stunned by what nature had to offer.
“The river was blue and clear, glistening in the sun. Fishermen’s baskets by the river (were) full of golden carp. It just felt like a fairy tale,” Xi recalled.
With this memory of being mesmerized by nature’s beauty during his formative years, Xi has put great emphasis on environmental protection wherever he served, and gradually formed his thoughts on the harmonious co-existence of humans and nature.
Back in 1985, while serving as the
chief of the Communist Party of China committee of Zhengding county, Hebei province, Xi directed the formulation of the local economic and social development plan, which included this remark: “(We) would rather not be affluent than allow pollutants.”
At the time, China’s decades-long economic take-off had just started, and sustainable development was yet to become the go-to option.
In 1999, as the acting governor of Fujian province, Xi paid a visit to the county of Changting, a mountainous area in the west of the province. Upon learning about the severe soil and water loss in the region, he urged local officials to work continuously to deal with the soil erosion in eight to 10 years and bring benefits to the people.
The rehabilitation of the local ecosystem was soon started, with the establishment of an ecological park, where Xi donated 1,000 yuan to plant a camphor tree. Today, Changting is one of the greenest counties in Fujian, with more than 80 percent of the land covered by forests.
In the neighboring province of Zhejiang, cement mills and mines were once the backbone of Yucun village. While these industries provided lucrative jobs, the thick dust and waste from the plants made the village almost unlivable.
In 2005, serving as chief of the Zhejiang provincial committee of the CPC, Xi visited the village, where he first proposed a guiding theory that endures to this day: “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.”
The signature remark is part of Xi’s Thought on Ecological Civilization, which was formally established at the country’s national conference on ecological protection in May 2018.
The thought is composed of several other key principles, including ensur
ing harmony between humans and nature, regarding a sound ecological environment as the most inclusive benefits to people’s well-being, seeing mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts as a community of life, protecting the environment through the best institutional arrangements and the strictest rule of law, as well as getting deeply involved in global environmental governance to come up with a worldwide solution for environmental protection and sustainable development.
This has brought about tremendous changes in China.
The ensuing actions taken by the Chinese under the guidance of Xi’s thought have strongly refuted those who thought they were hard-wired to see the trade-off between ecology and economy.
After Xi’s 2005 visit to the village in Zhejiang, mines and cement plants were shut down. As the local ecology improved, tourism became a major industry, helping locals become even more affluent.
“The formation of Xi’s Thought on Ecological Civilization is closely related to the fact that Xi worked at the grassroots level for a long time. He understands the people, feels for their sufferings and speaks their language,” said Huang Chengliang, a researcher with a think tank for eco-civilization studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
This year, while making an inspection trip in Guangxi, Xi revisited the Lijiang River and reiterated his belief that “ecological advantages can never be traded for gold.”
“Once the environment is destroyed, people will lose the foundation on which they depend for survival and development,” he said.
“When we talk about ecology, the most fundamental thing is to pursue harmony between man and nature. Such a philosophy is not only in line with the current trend in the world, but also originates from the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation that has lasted for thousands of years,” Xi said.
In classical Chinese philosophy, man
is taken as an integral part of nature.
Xi’s thought, deeply influenced by traditional Chinese culture and based on China’s practices, is “the oriental wisdom” contributed by the Chinese “to the transformation of human society from industrial civilization to ecological civilization,” Huang noted.
Since Xi took the helm as Chinese president in 2013, China has made unprecedented efforts to fight pollution, protect the ecosystem and combat climate change.
Back in 2013 and 2014, Chinese people came to be concerned about air pollution caused by the fine PM2.5 particles, and so did Xi.
“In the past few days, the first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was to check Beijing’s air quality, hoping that there was less smog,” he told guests attending an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing in 2014.
“We are going all out to clean up pollution with unprecedented efforts,” he promised Chinese and foreign guests. “I hope Beijing and the rest of China will always have blue skies, green mountains and clear waters, so that our children can live in a good environment. This is also an important part of the Chinese dream.”
With Xi as the top commander, China declared war against pollution. In
2015, a revised environmental protection law came into effect, with provisions hailed as “the strictest” in history. Central authorities began to conduct environmental supervision on a regular basis, imposing fines on polluters and punishing officials with violations.
In 2017, the 19th National Congress of the CPC identified pollution control as one of China’s “three tough battles”, along with poverty relief and risk control. In March 2018, China incorporated ecological civilization into its Constitution for the first time.
Xi’s vision for blue skies has gradually come true. In 2020, the percentage of days with good air quality was 87 percent in 337 cities at and above the prefecture level, up 5.8 percentage points from the 2015 level.
A war often comes with costs. In weighing the pros and cons, Xi again draws wisdom from Chinese culture.
“If you drain the pond to catch all the fish, you will certainly gain a lot today, but there will be no fish for the next year,” he once said.
China has imposed a 10-year ban on fishing in the country’s longest river, starting from the beginning of this year, with 228,000 fishermen on 110,000 boats relinquishing their nets, an ambitious move to reverse the region’s biodiversity loss.