Socialist Eco-Civilization as a Transformative Politics

The key to further elucidate and enrich the academic concept or discourse of “socialist eco-civilization” lies in that it cannot be simplified or falsified in reality as a public policy of ecological environment governance, but be separated from the grander and more important background and context of “socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics” and “socialist theory with Chinese characteristics.” More specifically, the discourse and politics of “socialist eco-civilization,” compared with various forms of “eco-centrism” or “eco-capitalism,” can (or should) represent the essence or goal of contemporary China’s eco-civilization construction strategy. Therefore, the theory of “social-ecological transformation” (SET) advocated and promoted by the “green-left” academic circles in the Western countries, as well as other radical transformation theories in other areas of the world, may not eventually lead to a “great transformation” or even a “socialist transformation” of contemporary capitalist society, but it does provide us some enlightenments on methodology (discourse) and politics of constructing a socialist eco-civilization in China today.