China Sustainable Cities Report
2016
Open and participatory governance systems - citizens deserve to be able to participate in decision-making that affects their lives. Governments need to be more transparent with the public and also support data sharing and collaboration between government departments for more effective and efficient public service delivery. Policy design and service delivery cannot and should not be the responsibility of government alone but needs to happen in a coordinated system that links government, enterprises, civil society organisations and the public.
6.2 Conclusion Urbanisation in China has taken the traditional path of increased ecological inputs resulting in increased human development. However, the world is now at a crisis point and increased ecological inputs are beginning to undermine human development. We now require two types of decoupling: that of economic growth from ecological input and that of quality of life from economic growth. Production and consumption in cities in the future must be resource-conservative and environmentally-friendly. The second is the decoupling of quality of life and economic growth, or in other words, improving quality of life while economic growth is controlled and per capita capital stock is stabilised. These two decouplings point out the essential difference between sustainable urban development targeted at social welfare growth and traditional development paths aimed at economic growth.79 The world has never seen anything like China’s economic transformation over the past thirty years. As China now begins to shift away from a singular focus on rapid economic development, the rebalancing that is beginning to happen under the New Normal is a very supportive environment for Chinese cities to make the transition to a more sustainable future. We can anticipate as extraordinary a transformation over the next thirty years, but one this time that supports human flourishing within ecological limits.
79. Zhu Dajian, China’s Development 3.0: Green Development under Eco-civilization—Ten Viewpoints about Deepening the Study of Eco-civilization. Economic Management in Proceedings of the Seventh Academic Annual Meeting of Social Sciences in Shanghai (2009), 1-12 (in Chinese).
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