ABSTRACT
China is at a crossroads of sustainability of both its economy, of its environment and the planet itself. This chapter discusses the unsustainable path that China is abandoning as well as the direction in which it is now heading. It explains how the notion of economic sustainability and ecological sustainability overlap to a great degree. China may have been held to represent the trend of unsustainable growth, but now, there is the possibility that it may lead the world away from calamity and towards sustainability. The chapter explains how China has no choice for economic reasons either. The notion of an increasing proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) going to services as China rebalances, and the accompanying notion that there is a natural consequence of lower economic growth, has tremendous consequences for the future trajectory of energy consumption in China.
