Why "ecological civilisation"? The values driving China's green turn under Xi Jinping

Over the past few years, China has emerged as a key player in the global arena of environmental protection. China is simultaneously the most polluting country (though not in per capita emissions) and the country that invests the most in renewable energy. Since 2007, environmental protection policies in China are framed under the umbrella term of “ecological civilisation”. This policy brief analyses the key values (i.e. beliefs and worldviews) driving the construction of an “ecological civilisation”. It highlights that the values driving China’s authorities are better understood in terms of “green growth”. This is because it does not entail a paradigmatic transformation of China’s current development path but attaches a prominent role to green technologies as China’s new growth engine. Two main motivations are behind the adoption of “ecological civilisation” by China’s authorities: first, for China’s foreign policy, the “ecological civilisation” aspire to become an alternative model that compete with the Western one. Second, the domestic promotion of “ecological civilisation” by Beijing has gradually reduced the space for bottom-up actions, motivated by the belief that only a top-down approach to behavioural control is efficient. Under Xi Jinping, the “ecological civilisation” has even assumed personalised-politics features, in its becoming “Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilisation”, so it is even more driven by the view that only a strict top-down control can practically solve environmental problems. This has practical and conceptual implications for the European Union (EU). At the practical level, while continuing the cooperation with China in the environmental field, the EU should pay attention to avoid supporting narratives (and sub-narratives) that celebrate the Chinese political approach to the environment. At the same time, the concept of ecological civilisation represents a conceptual challenge for the EU. This should lead to elaborating EU’s own narratives and imagination for a global future, and also reconsidering the key drivers of our approach to safeguard ourselves and the rest of the Earth.