We want blue waters and green hills, but we also want mountains of gold and silver. We would rather live in the green hills than the mountains of gold. For blue waters and green hills are mountains of gold and silver. We must never sacrifice our environment for the sake of temporary economic growth.
— Comment made by Xi Jinping during a question and answer period after his speech at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, September 7, 2013
Blue Waters and Green Hills, Mountains of Gold and Silver
--Environmental protection and economic growth reinforce and transform each other
Back in 2006, while still Party Secretary of Zhejiang Province, Xi Jinping elaborated at length about the dialectical relationship between environmental protection and economic development. And since the 18th CPC National Congress, he has seized many opportunities to emphasize, "Blue waters and green hills are mountains of gold and silver." He uses this analogy to explain the symbiotic relationship between the environment and the economy, emphasizing that the two are not in direct conflict, but rather reinforce and transform each other.
After more than thirty years of reform and opening up, the idea that "development is of overriding importance" has become very familiar to us. Everyone, from our leaders to the person on the street, realizes the importance of "mountains of gold and silver." Without a solid material base, a nation cannot throw off the yoke of poverty and backwardness. People are helpless to improve their quality of life. China is a large developing country with a population of 1.3 billion people, yet the reality is that we are still in the primary stage of socialism. Many people still live below the poverty line, and the gap between urban and rural development is still wide. China has become the world's second largest economy as measured by total GDP, but per capita GDP is still in the middle of world rankings. Economic development is beset with a host of problems that are closely connected to our daily lives, including health care, employment, education, and care for the aged. If we are to solve these problems, we must rely on development. It will require a material base, it will require investment, and it will require "mountains of gold and silver."
While promoting development is important, for far too long economic growth and environmental protection have been considered mutually exclusive in many places. Some people still stick to the logic, "productivity now, environmental protection later." Others simply ignore the very idea of sustainable development and disregard society's best interests. They are content to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, squander the world we have been given, and leave future generations with nothing. This thinking has exacted a heavy price, exhausting natural resources, destroying the environment, and sparking energy crises. It has become a huge obstacle to further economic development in China. Nature has its own rules for creating energy reserves and sustaining a clean environment. To try to force or break those rules would cause irreversible damage. If we insist on "productivity now," the time for environmental protection will have slipped through our fingers. If we do not live in harmony with Nature and respect natural laws, we will be on the receiving end of Nature's anger. As Engels warned: "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us." We cannot survive without "blue waters and green bills."
The level of PM 2.5 in our air has become a global topic. The environmental crisis requires the attention of every person in China. We do not want to pit development against the environment. We are not pursuing modernization only to live under dark skies, where there is no fresh air to breathe, and no clean water to drink.
People have come to a consensus about the real threat to the environment and the need to find ways to protect it. As a people, we need to rethink how best to integrate the efforts of government at the macro level with the actions of individuals at the micro level. At the same time, we should recognize that pursuing prosperity at the price of the environment has been a global problem. From the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, developed countries in the West faced similar worries about environmental pollution. They, too, confronted the embarrassment of open sewers and hazy skies. After all, is not that the reason London came to be called "the city of fog?" Hazy skies began to hover over the United States in the 1940s. Americans endured more than two decades of smog until 1970, when the Clean Air Act was unveiled. It also took Londoners more than twenty years of rethinking policies and correcting past mistakes before they once again "saw the light of day." Therefore, we must fully recognize the huge investment of time required to take on such a difficult problem. Environmental protection is not just an uphill battle; it is a protracted war. We must remain steadfast and patient in order to fight it.
Environmental protection and economic growth are not diametrically opposed, but rather are representatives of dialectical unity. Fundamentally, it requires a shift from a traditional resource-driven economy to an innovation-driven model at every level of local government. More importantly, it requires that we refrain from racing down a path with no recollection of our destination. If we think in terms of our quality of life, blue waters and green hills truly are mountains of gold and silver. As Xi Jinping said: "Protecting the environment equates to protecting productivity and ... improving the environment also equates to developing productivity." Chinese proverbs also remind us, "One need not worry about firewood while the green bills still stand," and "Evergreens are money trees, clean water is the fount of wealth." In other words, blue waters and green hills can reinforce economic development and turn into mountains of gold and silver. As we see many places successfully pursue prosperity and environmental protection, we remain hopeful for the future.
(An excerpt from XI JINPING: WIT AND VISION SELECTED QUOTATIONS AND COMMENTARY, published by FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS in 2015)
