China sits today at the confluence of a number of important changes – rapid technological, energy, and industrial revolutions, increasing Chinese international leadership, a growing and increasingly prosperous middle class, and slowing domestic economic growth. In the near term, these trends are intersecting with the global economic downturn as well as the health and social implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Layered on all of these is the challenge of climate change and the need for the global community to address this urgent planetary crisis. Together, these changes present a set of challenges as China looks to both its immediate and its long-term future.

It is possible to respond to these challenges in a way that navigates a new path toward growth in China, even as the economy moves toward carbon neutrality before 2060. This is the new growth pathway that will enable China to strengthen its economy, create new sources of employment, foster new
innovation and industrial competitiveness, and in doing so, reach the goal of an “ecological civilization.”