Synchronizing East and West

The Economic Observer: In General Secretary Hu Jintao's report at the 17th CPC National Congress, promoting a "conservation culture" is listed among the objectives of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Meanwhile, faced with a series of severe challenges, China put forward the Scientific Outlook on Development. How do you read the relationship between the two?

Pan Yue: Quite a few people equate the Scientific Outlook on Development to a simple transformation of the economic development mode or they even try to understand the building of a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society just at the technical level. However, this understanding of the Scientific Outlook on Development is incomprehensive. The Outlook aims at the overall transformation in various areas: political, economic, social and cultural, covering thinking and systems.

Besides, the strategy of promoting a conservation culture that is proposed by the Party fits into the global sustainable development concept. Conservation culture is the precondition for all the civilizations and it is an important part of the Scientific Outlook on Development.

What's the relevance of the Scientific Outlook on Development to environmental protection?

One of the theoretical origins of the Scientific Outlook on Development is the concept of "sustainable development," which focuses on the coordinated social, economic and environmental development. As far as China is concerned, the Scientific Outlook on Development further taps of the role of socialism in pushing forward social progress. Compared with the capitalist system, the superiority of the socialist system is reflected not only in which is more revolutionary or which has the higher productivity, but in which system can best promote common prosperity, social moral integrity, culture, fairness, justice, democratic rule of law and overall development of individuals. People's overall development requires sound environment.

What kind of positive economic results will the protection of the environment bring us?

Environmental protection will serve as a basis for the reformulation of China's sustainable development strategies, for example, the replanning of land use and industrial distribution according to the bearing capacity of the ecological environment and the establishment of institutional guarantees for the implementation of the Scientific Outlook on Development by making use of a series of environment-related economic policies and appraisal systems. Environmental protection will promote the transformation of both China's production mode and its social consumption mode. The endeavor will also give impetus to scientific innovation and strengthen the macro-control system geared for scientific development. On all accounts, to realize sound and rapid economic development in a scientific way, we must start from environmental protection.

Environmental quality is exerting an increasing impact on public life, so how do you see the significance of environmental protection on people's livelihood and social harmony?

From the social perspective, environmental protection is a helpful window to show how the Scientific Outlook on Development works for people's livelihood, because if there is no harmony between mankind and nature, social harmony is impossible. Regrettably, environmental unfairness is currently evident in relations between urban areas and the countryside, between coastal developed regions and western ecologically vulnerable regions, and between the wealthy and the poor.

How can the unfairness be eliminated?

To remove the above-mentioned problems depends completely on new