He Praxis of China’s ‘Shengtai Wenming’(Ecological Civilization)

Abstract

The impacts of human-nature violence translate as ecological crises which enable a fundamental reorientation of such concepts as ‘justice.’ It emerges that ‘social’ justice is a corollary of ‘ecological’ justice, with cultural and structural systems within the human world enabling select ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘acting on’ both. China’s ‘shengtai wenming’ (ecological civilization) is treated as a cultural system with attendant implications for structural reform, which together present a governance-centric focus on ecological and social justice. The primary objective of this study, informed by critical realist metatheoretical understandings of nature, and the interrelationality of ‘structure’ and ‘culture’, is to explore Chinese praxis vis-à-vis ecological justice in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this purpose, Pakistan is taken as a key site; using the example of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to determine a perceived ‘duality’ in Chinese climate/environmental governance. In light of this, this research examines Pakistan’s fractured environmental governance regimes in order to assess the disparity between how operative structural and cultural systems aid/impede the ‘knowability’ and ‘actionability’ of climate change in both Pakistani and Chinese contexts. Additionally, key themes arising from China’s prevalent ‘cultural’ systems are used to problematize understandings of ‘positive peace’ and how these engage with human-nature interrelations in the context of ‘harmony’ versus ‘violence.’ In doing so, it identifies how China’s understanding of international engagement, under the rubric of ‘non-interference’ and ‘win-win collaboration,’ takes a different trajectory than the neoliberal paradigm, and acknowledges the agency of partner states such as Pakistan. Thus, this research examines how the environment-economy-society nexus has been addressed, in traditional Chinese history and philosophy, as premised on a nuanced understanding of ‘harmony,’ and how such an understanding is being revived in Xi Jinping’s governance-centric approach to ecological, and social, justice.