ABSTRACT
The human history of 4 million years may be roughly divided into three eras of handmade tools, mechanical tools, and intelligent tools. The era of handmade tools covers primitive and agricultural civilizations, that of mechanical tools covers industrial civilization, and that of intelligent tools covers modern ecologic civilization.
What are we going to do with high GDP or maximal profits when air is heavily polluted, the concentration of PM 2.5 reaches level 4, even 5, and we are deprived of the freedom to breathe fresh air? Now that people have a different value, there is hope for an ecologic civilization.
The strategy of sustainable development that is oriented toward people integrates the strategy of population development into that of sustainable development to seek sustainable population development as well as sustainable relationships between the population and natural resources, the environment, the economy, and the society while persisting with the aim to realize people’s all-around development and to drive that development with human capital as its major engine.
The “three-step” strategy of population development is closely associated with the pursuit of the “Chinese dream” of the great revival of the Chinese nation, with the current efforts to transform the development mode, adjust the economic structure, and promote reform, and with the goal of informatization, industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization – the new four modernizations. We are now in the middle phase of the second step, a key position to the link between the first and third steps and to the eventual overall success of the strategy, and must proceed with no hesitation and with stability and good outcomes.
The per capita GDP of China is approximately one-sixth of that of Japan and that of the United States now. It is projected to become a developed country to a medium level in 2050 and will continue to grow after that, which will undoubtedly bring us to a rich phase. Do we choose to become rich like Japan or the United States? What is the beautiful life we desire? Where do we find it? Perhaps sustainable development holds the answers.
Some fundamental problems of the relationships between the population and the resources, the environment, the economy, and the society are waiting for solutions, as well as a large number of phenomena that are against coordinated and sustainable development. These are all difficult to manage, so there is still a long way to go to realize sustainable development. However, as long as the strategy of sustainable population development is persisted with and scientific and reasonable policies are issued with proper timing and strict implementation, the road of a big country is right before us, on which we will walk to the great revival of the Chinese nation.
