China's Road to Sustainable Development

By 徐晋阳 (Jinyang Xu)

三十年来，“可持续发展”概念已在国际法领域得到了牢固确立，并成为了国家政策、甚至意识形态的重要指导原则。可持续发展概念在中国的影响也是持续而显著的，它不仅作为国家发展战略指导着经济结构调整，而且作为一种发展理论，也论证了中国现代化的合理性。中国自1972年联合国人类环境会议以来，全面参与全球环境治理并积极倡导“发展权”，最近又提出了“全球发展倡议”。本文聚焦中国与国际法上可持续发展概念的关系，回顾了中国在一些重要的可持续发展会议的国际谈判中所持的立场并探讨了中国是如何吸收、实践和转变可持续发展概念的。

Over the past 30 years, the concept of “sustainable development” has been firmly established in the field of international law and has become an important guiding principle for national policies and even ideologies. For example, the impact of the concept of sustainable development in China is enduring and significant as it not only operates as a national development strategy to guide economic restructuring, but also as a development theory to justify Chinese modernization. Since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, China has been fully engaged in global environmental governance and actively advocated the “right to development.” More recently China has put forward a “Global Development Initiative.” This paper focuses on the relationship between China and the concept of sustainable development in international law. It reviews China’s positions during international negotiations at some key conferences on sustainable development and discusses how China absorbed, practiced, and transformed the concept of sustainable development.