"Ecological civilization, Huzhou first. ”
From the birthplace of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" in 2005, to the "Ecological Civilization Demonstration Zone" in 2014, and then to the promulgation of relevant laws on "Ecological Civilization Model City" in 2024, Huzhou has always been a "pioneer area" for the construction of ecological civilization, and has undertaken the mission of China's policy experiment and institutional reform.
The significance of ecological civilization is to turn high-quality welfare, social equity and environmental protection into the "last word", replace the GDP-only performance mechanism with a long-term audit mechanism, and promote the transformation of a regulatory government into a service-oriented government.
Over the past 19 years, Huzhou's reform process has not only included specific actions to practice the idea of ecological civilization, but also reflected the innovation of ecological civilization thinking that keeps pace with the times and continues to iterate.
The scene of the release ceremony of the "Regulations on the Promotion of the Construction of a Model City of Ecological Civilization in Huzhou City" Photo: Zhang Jian
On April 18, the Regulations on Promoting the Construction of Huzhou Ecological Civilization Model Cities were promulgated in Beijing. On the one hand, it systematically implements the exploration and practice of the pilot project in the form of law, and on the other hand, the grassroots practices that have been tested by reality are promoted through demonstration to promote the discussion, verification and evolution of "point to area", which is expected to further promote the reform of the system.
From the birthplace of the "Two Mountains" to the demonstration area of ecological civilization
Huzhou's "three-step" implies the transformation of China's development approach and decision-making thinking since China's reform and opening up. The economic miracle and the environmental crisis are two sides of the same coin.
In the previous development model, local governments had to provide cheap land, labor, raw materials and preferential policies, but also prioritize the development of infrastructure conditions such as roads, railways and energy supply for local competitiveness.
It can even be said that "neglected" environmental protection policies are an integral part of the investment attraction strategy – as well as other cheap capital elements, to increase the return on capital for investors.
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How to dismantle the two and make the harmonious development of production, life and ecology have become an important issue for the government.
On August 15, 2005, Comrade Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, first put forward the scientific assertion that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" during his inspection in Anji Yu Village.
At that time, Huzhou people's choice was also "difficult". To develop, or to blue sky and white clouds, you can't have both for a while.
In 2004, Changxing, the "hometown of batteries", paid a heavy price for the pillar industry with a total industrial output value of nearly 300 million yuan. After the illegal pollution related incidents were exposed, among the 102 battery companies investigated, only 27% of the plate production enterprises had basically perfect environmental protection facilities, and the environmental protection facilities of assembly enterprises were basically not matched, which was almost industry-wide pollution.
Huzhou is famous for its mines, with nearly 1,000 pits in the city. Deqing's pillar industry "sells stones". At that time, there was a saying that "one building in Shanghai, half a mountain in Huzhou". The mining form is rough, the green hills are full of devastation, and the dust is flying all over the sky.
Subsequently, Anjiyu Village held a villagers' meeting and decided to stop mining and take the path of green development – even if it reduces income by more than 3 million yuan a year. This "clever move" has become the background for the birth of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets".
Deep Blue Project Cafe, a former abandoned mine pit
Since 2005, Huzhou has unswervingly practiced the concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" and the strategy of "ecological excellent city", implemented measures such as industrial transformation and upgrading, energy conservation and emission reduction, comprehensive treatment of Taihu Lake water environment, and beautiful rural construction, and initially explored a new development path for economic and social development and ecological environmental protection to promote each other.
From water control, haze control, mining control, to the construction of beautiful villages by the whole people - Anji's "China's Beautiful Village", Deqing's "China's Harmonious and Beautiful Homeland", Wuxing's "South Taihu Lake Happy Community", etc., truly reproduce the green waters and green mountains of Song poems "travel all over the beautiful land south of the Yangtze River, and live only in Huzhou".
On May 30, 2014, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the State Forestry Administration jointly issued the "Construction Plan for the Ecological Civilization Pilot Demonstration Zone in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"). This is the first national strategy ever implemented in Huzhou, marking that Huzhou has become the first prefecture-level ecological civilization pilot demonstration area in China.
Production development, affluent life, good ecology
In the construction of ecological civilization, it is necessary to "adhere to the path of civilized development with production development, affluent life and good ecology".
In the past ten years, Huzhou's reform has been revolving around this main line from an ecological civilization pilot demonstration area to an ecological civilization model city. At a time when the proportion of exports, large-scale foreign investment and technology transfer is declining, increasing the consumption of the vast number of Chinese people, expanding China's internal market, and thus promoting more sustainable economic development, is an important background for the construction of ecological civilization.
The essence of this stage of exploration is how to promote economic development and people's prosperity at the same time when the ecological environment has been protected and optimized.
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In 2024, the "Regulations on the Promotion of the Construction of Huzhou Ecological Civilization Model City" will be promulgated, which means that Huzhou, as a "model city of ecological civilization", is enough to show its landmark achievements, pioneering attitude and mission.
Chen Hao, Secretary of the Huzhou Municipal Party Committee, summarized the "Three Butterfly Changes" and "Five Models" and explained how Huzhou practices the idea of ecological civilization.
At the production level, economic development has changed from "resource-driven" to "innovation-driven". Huzhou's GDP rose to 401.5 billion yuan, the added value of industry above designated size exceeded 100 billion yuan, and the intensity of R&D investment jumped to 3.4%, ranking third in Zhejiang Province.
Henglin Home Furnishing, located in Anji County, was selected into the list of "National Green Factory".
Create a "model of green, low-carbon and circular development": cultivate eight emerging industries such as new energy vehicles and key components, semiconductors and optoelectronics, biomedicine, and geographic information +, accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and the agglomeration of emerging industries has reached 70.6%.
The "Innovation Valley Economy" represented by the Xisai Science Valley is booming, and the United Nations Global Geographic Information Knowledge and Innovation Center has settled in Huzhou, and a number of high-end scientific research platforms such as the National Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology and the Moganshan Dixin Laboratory have been introduced.
The Xisai Science Valley in spring is located between the green waters and green mountains of Xisai Mountain in Wuxing District
At the level of life, people's lives have changed from "well-off in an all-round way" to "towards common prosperity". The per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents reached 74,400 yuan and 47,455 yuan respectively, and the income ratio shrank to 1.57:1, making it "China's happiest city" for two consecutive years.
To create a model of promoting green and common prosperity demonstration first, ecological benefit, ecological benefit, and ecology for the people: the development of all-for-one tourism, the creation of three national tourist resorts, the city will receive 110 million tourists in 2023, and achieve a total tourism income of 135.25 billion yuan;
Accelerate the cultivation of innovative youth formats such as digital nomad communes and Qinglaiji, and the rural revitalization work has ranked first in the province for three consecutive years. In the "good scenery", "good economy" and "good money" continue to rise.
Overlooking the YOLO B&B located in the Mogan Mountains of Deqing County
At the ecological level, Huzhou has become the first prefecture-level ecological civilization pilot demonstration zone in the country, and has been recognized by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity as the world's only demonstration zone for international cooperation in ecological civilization, and the construction of ecological civilization has been inspected and encouraged by the State Council.
Create a model of a community of life in mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes and grasses: fight the battle of pollution prevention and control, coordinate the "three beauties construction" of beautiful cities, beautiful towns and beautiful villages, and create a beautiful garden with green mountains and clear water, blue sky and fresh breeze "nourishing the lungs", clean water and delicious food "nourishing the stomach", and poetic and livable "nourishing the heart".
In terms of effect, Huzhou has achieved "eleven consecutive excellence" in the assessment of beautiful Zhejiang, "five water co-governance" has won the Dayu Ding for nine times, and won the Golden Tripod for three consecutive times, the classification of domestic waste ranks first in the same type of cities in the country, and the public satisfaction with the ecological environment has risen for 9 consecutive years.
The significance of governance, model and civilization
Huzhou's construction of a model city of ecological civilization is of three important significance.
First of all, Huzhou has built a model for the modernization of ecological governance system and governance capacity. Governance has leapt from "things" to "systems".
Huzhou has built a "five-in-one" system of legislation, standards, systems, digital intelligence, and culture. For example, in terms of local legislation, 11 local regulations on ecological civilization such as beautiful villages and green finance have been promulgated, 112 local standards for ecological civilization construction have been issued in the formulation of standards, and 12 have been upgraded to national standards, in terms of institutional structure, the Municipal Party Committee has been innovatively established to build an ecological civilization construction committee, in terms of digital intelligence empowerment, applications such as "industrial carbon code" and "ecological policing" have been developed, and in terms of cultural cultivation, the country's first ecological civilization cadre college has been established to carry out the creation of "green cells" in the whole region.
The industrial "carbon code" platform enables regional carbon monitoring
Sun Xianlong, Secretary of the Party Group and Director of the Standing Committee of the Huzhou Municipal People's Congress, pointed out four deepening roles: deepening the study and implementation of the idea of ecological civilization, deepening the understanding of the law of ecological civilization construction, deepening the implementation of ecological civilization construction measures, and deepening the improvement and upgrading of social governance mechanisms.
Secondly, Huzhou will play a leading role as the world's only demonstration zone for international cooperation in ecological civilization, and accelerate the construction of a beautiful China pilot zone, so as to establish a "Chinese model" and become an important window to show China's ecological civilization ideas to the world.
Fifty years later, the Club of Rome, which is famous for its "limits to growth" (1972), released its latest report, "Flipping the Limits: The Awakening of Ecological Civilization" (2022), which examines the global environmental crisis from its philosophical roots and proposes to promote "significant structural transformation" through "radical redesign". The report specifically mentions China's green actions at the national level, affirming and promoting China's ecological planning and governance systems in areas such as energy conservation and emission reduction, low-carbon recycling, and environmental protection.
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The report also notes that Huzhou, one of the five pilot cities, has overcome barriers to data sharing between different government departments to compile a "natural resource balance sheet" and turn ecological civilization policies into quantitative actions.
After the release of the "Regulations" on April 18, Li Hongwei, director of the Ecological Civilization Construction Teaching and Research Department of the Social and Ecological Civilization Teaching and Research Department of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said in an interview that Huzhou has shown an international vision and will take the initiative to spread the story of beautiful China in the future - including institutional guidance, industrial layout, "carbon code" and other aspects.
Finally, "the ecological environment is a question of development mode and way of life. "The mode of development and way of life, or the development of production, affluent life, and good ecology, constructs a political ideal and civilization value of "the unity of man and nature".
It is located in the star port base of northern Zhejiang in Nanxun District
Mencius repeatedly emphasized: "A house of five acres, a tree with mulberry, and fifty people can be clothed." Chickens, guineas, dogs, and animals, if there is no time, the seventy can eat meat. A hundred acres of land, don't take it away, a few families can be hungry. The teaching of the order, the righteousness of filial piety, and the person who gives the confession does not live up to the road. Seventy people eat meat, and the people are not hungry or cold, but those who are not kings are not not. ”
Producing according to the laws of nature and living according to the righteousness of filial piety are the core of Mencius's philosophy of "benevolent government" and the connotation of the "ideal state" of early Confucianism. In the sense of the inheritance of Chinese civilization, the construction of ecological civilization, the construction of a beautiful China, and the creation of a happy land where man and nature are united, and where people can live and work in peace and contentment are the meanings of the Chinese dream of realizing the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, realizing the "two centenary" goals, and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
The reappearance of "Egret Flying in front of Xisai Mountain" in Huzhou, with clear waters and lush mountains, is not only an outstanding achievement of China's ecological protection and green transformation, but also the growth and abundance of "peach blossom flowing water mandarin fish fat", and it also hides the people's desire for "slanting wind and drizzle do not need to return".
Produced by the Yangtze River Delta Research Institute of Nanfeng Window
Author | Rong wisdom
Edit | Chen Ying
Co-ordination | Check Yiming
Typography | Quiet Mountain