576
X. Zhang
1 Background of the Proposal of Ecological Civilization:
The Cost-Externalized Western Industrial Civilization Is
Unsustainable
If we look at the modern environmental crisis with the systematic and dialectical
viewpoint of traditional Chinese medicine, we would find that the environmental
crisis is not the source of the modern industrial civilization crisis, but one of its
outcomes. In TCM, you cannot just treat the eyes if you have an eye disease, but
should treat the liver where the root cause lies. The Five-Sphere Integrated Plan for
building an ecological civilization proposed at the 18th National Congress of the
CPC doesn’t aim at the local improvement of industrial civilization, but attempts to
systematically and comprehensively explore a new civilization unlike the industrial
one. The 18th National Congress of the CPC put forth this great ecological initiative
against the background that the western industrial civilization is unsustainable. It
is true that it still has a lot that we can learn from and draw on, but in general the
western civilization mode has completed its mission and fallen into a dilemma of
more cost than benefits.
1. Western industrial civilization is a “cost-externalized industrial mode”
As developed western countries only encountered resource and environmental
restraints after industrialization was accomplished, they at first didn’t view resources
and environment as a cost of industrialization that they had to bear. From an economic
perspective, the western industrialization mode was established on the assumption
of unlimited resource supply and sufficient self-purifying capability of the environment. Such an assumption may hold water for a certain period of time, but problems emerge when industrialization consumes more energies and causes more environmental pollution than nature can bear. With the western mode, industrialization
doesn’t pay for energy consumption and environmental pollution, but transfers the
price to the nature and society. In this sense, the western industrialization mode is
a “cost-externalized” one that benefits western countries at the expense of others.
If such a mode is not overhauled and if environmental pollution is only addressed
from the outside, it is impossible to fundamentally solve the conflict between man
and nature.
2. Modern industrialized economy is capital economy that lacks restriction
on consumption and pursues unlimited expansion of production
Driven by market competition and technological innovation, how to generate
maximal output with minimal input is the intrinsic mechanism and goal of the whole
industrial economy. Guided and controlled by this goal, stimulating the human desire
for consumption to the largest extent to continuously expand production becomes
the internal drive of western industrialization and capital economy. The basic and
ultimate goal of production in any age is meeting people’s living needs, but in the
modern industrialized system dominated by capital, consumption only exists for
X. Zhang
1 Background of the Proposal of Ecological Civilization:
The Cost-Externalized Western Industrial Civilization Is
Unsustainable
If we look at the modern environmental crisis with the systematic and dialectical
viewpoint of traditional Chinese medicine, we would find that the environmental
crisis is not the source of the modern industrial civilization crisis, but one of its
outcomes. In TCM, you cannot just treat the eyes if you have an eye disease, but
should treat the liver where the root cause lies. The Five-Sphere Integrated Plan for
building an ecological civilization proposed at the 18th National Congress of the
CPC doesn’t aim at the local improvement of industrial civilization, but attempts to
systematically and comprehensively explore a new civilization unlike the industrial
one. The 18th National Congress of the CPC put forth this great ecological initiative
against the background that the western industrial civilization is unsustainable. It
is true that it still has a lot that we can learn from and draw on, but in general the
western civilization mode has completed its mission and fallen into a dilemma of
more cost than benefits.
1. Western industrial civilization is a “cost-externalized industrial mode”
As developed western countries only encountered resource and environmental
restraints after industrialization was accomplished, they at first didn’t view resources
and environment as a cost of industrialization that they had to bear. From an economic
perspective, the western industrialization mode was established on the assumption
of unlimited resource supply and sufficient self-purifying capability of the environment. Such an assumption may hold water for a certain period of time, but problems emerge when industrialization consumes more energies and causes more environmental pollution than nature can bear. With the western mode, industrialization
doesn’t pay for energy consumption and environmental pollution, but transfers the
price to the nature and society. In this sense, the western industrialization mode is
a “cost-externalized” one that benefits western countries at the expense of others.
If such a mode is not overhauled and if environmental pollution is only addressed
from the outside, it is impossible to fundamentally solve the conflict between man
and nature.
2. Modern industrialized economy is capital economy that lacks restriction
on consumption and pursues unlimited expansion of production
Driven by market competition and technological innovation, how to generate
maximal output with minimal input is the intrinsic mechanism and goal of the whole
industrial economy. Guided and controlled by this goal, stimulating the human desire
for consumption to the largest extent to continuously expand production becomes
the internal drive of western industrialization and capital economy. The basic and
ultimate goal of production in any age is meeting people’s living needs, but in the
modern industrialized system dominated by capital, consumption only exists for