ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors ask whether sustainable development in China is in truth a viable concept. They reviews the principles of sustainability as they have evolved since the coining of the terms in Western development literature. The authors highlight chinese cultural traditions that embody or complement these principles. Cultural threads running through Chinese traditions lend support for a nascent concept of sustainability in China. As China undergoes perhaps its most far-reaching transformation, new approaches are arising to relieve the accompanying political, economic, and cultural stresses. One approach is sustainability, formally initiated by the central government in a program to develop “sustainable cities” throughout the nation. The conflict between modernism and tradition draws heavily from this rhetoric and persists in the form of Chinese sustainability. In contrast to Taoism, the Confucian tradition holds that the central goal in human life is to create a cultural order in the world.
