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Billboard reading "Clear waters and green mountains". By Huangdan2060 - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link.
In the face of pressing global environmental challenges, Marxist ecology has emerged as a foundational pillar of global left analysis. It represents a critical examination of the modern environmental crisis. The Chinese academic community has been engaging in Marxist ecology research since the 1980s, drawing on traditional studies on Marxism and on the history of socialist modernization. This differs from the trajectory of Marxist ecology in the West, which has gone through different stages, from denying or supplementing Marx’s ecology to rediscovering and developing it.1 Chinese scholars have highlighted the interpretation of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’s ecological perspectives from the outset. They have proactively referred to Western insights from eco-Marxism/ecosocialism, aiming to formulate a socialist ecological civilization (eco-civilization) theory with distinctive Chinese characteristics. This article discusses some of the diverse research paradigms and their course of development within Chinese Marxist ecology while also highlighting the accomplishments of and challenges facing Marxist ecology in China.
The Interpretation of Marx and Engels’s Ecological Thought
The interpretation of Marx and Engels’s ecological thought not only involves elucidating their ecological perspectives, but also applying their theories to analyze the contemporary historical context. Research on the ecological thought of Marx and Engels in China is characterized predominantly by a focus on philosophy and economics. Scholars in economics aim to develop socialist environmental economics based on classical Marxist writings and infused with distinctive Chinese characteristics. For instance, in 1981, Huang Shunji and Liu Jiongzhong delved into the notion of the coordinated development of humanity and nature presented in Capital.2 In 1983, Xu Dixin argued that Marx had already initiated topics such as ecological balance and the metabolism between humanity and nature, providing a theoretical foundation for ecological economics.3 Chinese scholars widely agree that the productive forces organized for profit maximization under capitalism inherently clash with the imperatives of environmental conservation. Nevertheless, the advantage in environmental conservation offered by socialism needs to be explored through the social organization of production and the scientific management of natural resources. In the realm of philosophy, Chinese scholars have concentrated on the Marxist view of nature and its ecological implications. For instance, around the year 2000, Huan Qingzhi and Xie Baojun published works interpreting Marx and Engels’s views of nature from the perspective of ecological philosophy.4 They aimed to demonstrate that the Marxist view of nature is a practical, dialectical, and historically materialist one that scrutinizes environmental issues through the lens of human history and social class. It embodies a “red-green” thinking that integrates environmental and social liberation, advocating for sustainable development with a humanistic focus.
Billboard reading “Clear waters and green mountains.” By Huangdan2060 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link
