Environment as an element of development: The growing role of energy efficiency and environmental protection in chinese economic policy

Abstract

The developmental issues at the core of this book are fundamental to China’s discussions of what the country has achieved over the past three decades of reform and opening and where policy makers believe society and the economy need to go in the future. Economic growth has been at the center of China’s development agenda since 1949 (Brandt and Rawski 2008), although the approach to economic growth shifted radically. The reforms unleashed by Deng Xiaoping, starting in 1979 and then accelerating in 1992 are widely credited with economic growth averaging almost 10 percent a year for the entire period since 1980. 1 Moreover, the Chinese government has particularly prided itself on raising hundreds of millions from abject poverty during this period, an achievement that has been widely recognized by the international development community (Ravallion and Chen 2005).