From Conquest of Nature to Ecological Civilization: Development, Revolution, and Science in Chinese Communist Party Ideology

Over the 99-year history of the CCP, Development, Revolution, and Science have been the anchors of its ideology, instruments for realizing a teleological Marxist vision of historical progress. But the respective emphasis and even the definition of these three key terms have shifted. When Deng Xiaoping said in 1992 that “only Development is a hard truth,” he was affirming the primacy of this historical teleology, and implicitly stating that Revolution was a servant of Development. Deng was validating the Reform and Opening policies initiated in the late 1970s, showing that they were not, as many have simplistically stated, shifting the policy emphasis from “Revolution” to “Development,” but rather allowing that there are many ways to Development, and Revolution was only one. Thus 1978 really was a turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but not the kind that is conventionally presumed. Another turning point came in the late 1990s, when Party leaders realized that Development needed to be “Sustainable,” that if the teleology of progress were to be maintained, Development would have to take into account the limits of ecosystems and the natural world. Thus Development became Sustainable Development and the teleology was revised to include a sequence from Agricultural to Industrial to Ecological Civilization as a parallel to the sequence from Feudalism to Capitalism to Socialism. These insights argue for a politics of ecology, rather than or alongside a politics of social relations, as a way to periodize and understand the first 70 years of PRC history.