Interview: China can make big decisions, do big things -- U.S. scholar

American scholar Roy Morrison was confident and predicted as early as ten years back that China would lead the way toward sustainability.

The Chinese government reiterated its emphasis on ecological civilization construction during the ongoing National People's Congress held in Beijing, the national capital of China, and vowed to further reduce carbon emission, fight against all kinds of pollution, improve the eco-system, preserve natural resources, among other anti-climate change efforts.

In the fiction-like book entitled "Eco Civilization 2140: A Twenty-Second-Century History and Survivor's Journal," which was published in 2005, Morris wrote "2070-2090: 'The East is Green.' China leads the way toward sustainability."

Two years into his prediction, the Chinese government first declared its drive to build ecological civilization in 2007 and in the following years China enhanced the effort to transform the economy and society to be more sustainable.

Morrison has foreseen and described a social transformation from industrial civilization to an ecological civilization. " Building such a civilization will involve a change that could be as significant as the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial civilization," he wrote in his another earlier book, " Ecological Democracy."

"China already has, in principle, embraced the pursuit of an ecological civilization as the underlying basis for policy and advanced an ecological civilization internationally," said Morrison in a recent interview with Xinhua, commenting on the Report on The Work of the Government delivered by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on March 5 to the Third Session of the 12th National People's Congress. "The strong commitment to renewable development, electric vehicles is clear, efficiency improvement, pollution reduction is admirable."

Morrison stressed he can imagine and understand what a big challenge China is now facing on its road toward an ecological civilization society, given the country's vast landmass and huge population base. It is usually seen that economic development is conflicting with environment protection. But China is trying to make economic growth means ecological improvement and the regeneration of natural capital.

"China can make big decisions, do big things," insisted Morrison.

"The broad context of an ecological transformation is to end poverty, fairly redistribute resources, strengthen freedom and community, justice and fairness," he noted, adding that "the focus on steady growth is a reflection of both economic and ecological wisdom."

"The strong commitment to bilateral, multilateral trade and international investment supports the potential for China's role as global efficiency and sustainability leader if it aggressively follows such a path and emerges as leader in global transformation to an ecological civilization," he said. Endite