The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s global infrastructure development strategy and its President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign policy program, is one that explicitly promotes international exchange, cooperation and dialogue. More than 140 countries have now signed a memorandum of understanding with China to cooperate under the BRI, including 21 from Latin America and the Caribbean, with Argentina the region’s newest member.
One of the BRI’s aspirations, according to China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, is to “share the concept and practice of ecological civilization,” a vision of a green future that has permeated all areas of Chinese policymaking. First appearing in government discussions in 2007, and initially national in scope, ecological civilization now aims to convey China’s commitment to environmental issues globally as a way to restore cooperation and stability to the international order.
There are also economic motivations: building a global ecological civilization requires a network of infrastructure, trade, financial integration and renewable energy technology – one that may originate in China.
Key elements of ecological civilization include justice, efficiency, harmony, high levels of production from clean processes, sustainable use of resources, and good social governance.
Inspired by several Chinese philosophical principles, ecological civilization is presented as a paradigm of national development and one that has gained particular traction under the leadership of President Xi, having been incorporated into the Communist Party constitution in 2012. Its key elements include justice, efficiency, harmony and cultural development, as well as striving for high levels of production from clean processes, sustainable use of resources and good social governance. Efficiency, in this context, is understood as achieving a high level of production while maintaining a state of ecological harmony and cultural development.
Looking towards the global scale, the discourse of ecological civilization can be seen to aim to influence environmental governance in international forums, in “common but differentiated responsibilities” to address climate change within the UN negotiations and aligning with the goals of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The message of this position is that each country should be able to address sustainable development issues based on its own experiences, and thus design its own environmental institutions.
So what are the implications for Latin America of China’s push for ecological civilization?
The concept of ecological civilization has the potential to influence a new paradigm for cooperation on sustainability. But for Latin America – a politically fragmented region that has long relied on high-impact extractive industries – integrating into the discourse in a way that could enable it to benefit from Chinese technology and finance also poses challenges.
Green technology
Among the strategies that could contribute to the push for ecological civilization is the China Standards 2035 plan. This seeks to position China as a benchmark for global standards in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and new energy, and calls for cooperation in these areas through the BRI. The initiative is also presented as a way to use Chinese technology to help other countries in their transition to green economies.
This green transition, as part of a more global ecological civilization, can also be understood as an implicit lever for Chinese economic growth and regulatory influence through international standardization.
Rhetorically, and with a consolidated leadership role in the global renewables market, both the BRI and the ecological civilization concept seek to create a positive impression of the international spread of Chinese environmental technology, standards and governance.
The promotion of ecological civilization also relies on the message that China is an “emerging” power, which it hopes will create favorable impressions about pro-South discourses and cooperation between countries seeking better access to technology and finance.
Ecological civilization and Latin America
For Latin America, understanding and engaging with the concept of ecological civilization is important and can have far-reaching benefits. In addition to having implications for China’s technological ambitions in the global marketplace, it could help shape the dynamics of trans-Pacific exchange.
As Latin America increasingly engages with the BRI, speaking the language of China’s ecological civilization and sustainable development can help curry diplomatic favor. It can also enable governments and regional organizations to more closely coordinate the principles and policy guidelines that can determine the terms of trade, investment and foreign development assistance, with consequences for the energy transition.
To date, the notion of ecological civilization has not featured widely in official Chinese discourse or media regarding Latin America, nor in that of officials in Latin America, although the concept has clearly influenced efforts to “green” the BRI. Chinese officials and commentators have repeatedly attempted to construct shared narratives about human harmony with the environment, shared principles, and the embrace of cooperation in the face of environmental challenges.
Alicia Bárcena, the influential outgoing executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), who has advocated closer political and economic ties with China, has made positive remarks about the concept of ecological civilization. In a 2020 opinion piece that aired in several national media in Latin America and the Caribbean, she described it as an important expression of the need to address the global environmental crisis and promote a green economic recovery, along with other initiatives such as the “green deals” of the EU, South Korea and the American Democrats.
Understanding and engaging with the concept of ecological civilization can help shape the dynamics of transpacific exchange.
While building bilateral support for China’s foreign policy ambitions has had some success in the region, multilaterally China has sought to set the agenda for scientific and technical cooperation, policy coordination, multilateral financing, commercialization and technology transfer through the “Plan China-CELAC Joint Action Plan for Cooperation in Key Fields (2022-2024)”. This plan, released after the latest forum between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in December 2021, opens the door to the spread of green technologies and standards, information and communication technologies.
Chinese companies and financiers have been a visible presence in Latin America’s expanding renewable energy market. Continued investment and cooperation in this area is targeted by the action plan, aiming to expand a network of Latin American economies using Chinese technology. However, this investment has so far been concentrated in a few countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, so it cannot be said that such a network is consolidated – or that Latin America is shaping ecological civilization in this regard.
There are other obstacles. First, regional integration in Latin America is weak and bodies such as CELAC are weakly institutionalized. Others, like Mercosur, are divided in their visions of their relationship with China. This makes it impossible to articulate joint agreements and strategies, in most cases, despite the development cooperation and trade opportunities that China can offer. At a deeper level, the concept of ecological civilization does not question the principles of modern capitalist civilization, which has made Latin America a supplier of high environmental impact raw material inputs to global value chains. Nor has Latin America itself given importance to the “territorial approach” to sustainable development, a concept in the development literature that prioritizes local and regionally appropriate paradigms and advocates discouraging “extractivism” through policies.
Under these circumstances, if Latin America hopes to strengthen its relations with China, it must seek an engagement with the concept of ecological civilization, following all national policies that aim to strengthen the territorial approach to overcoming rural poverty. This means supporting cross-sectoral processes of productive transformation, taking advantage of Chinese inputs and know-how that can help increase efficiency and prevent the continued expansion of mining and agricultural frontiers. Latin American nations must not miss the opportunities presented in a new global environmental and economic context of green ambitions, one that has been shaped in part by China.
The challenge for Latin America is to participate in this turn towards ecological civilization by including business initiatives, its independent professional organizations, academia and environmental movements – both in discussions and in the implementation of a sustainable development agenda.
These efforts would help build a China-Latin America cooperation dialogue in which technologies that support an ecological civilization are linked with solutions such as microfinance for entrepreneurship and the creation of agro-industrial development parks, among others.
A larger shift based on the principles of ecological civilization assumes that Latin America must reorient its relationship with China from one superficially based on trade to one based on environmental sustainability—and as an important region in building a global environmental agenda.
