Chinese Journal of Urban and Environmental Studies

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a key component of the concept of sustainable social development advocated by the international community. The international community has successively set periodic goals for ESD, e.g. The Dakar Framework for Action and Education 2030 Framework for Action, to advance universal education that is conducive to global equity and quality development. According to the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) reports of UNESCO, ESD has made great strides on many fronts worldwide since 2000, but the gaps between countries with different incomes and levels of development remain significant, and gender and class inequalities in educational opportunities persist. China has yielded substantial results in ESD with all its indexes reaching or even surpassing the goals set in The Dakar Framework for Action. And in response to the Education 2030 Framework for Action, the Chinese Government is formulating Education 2030: Modernization of Education in China to guide China’s ESD, with the aim to raise the level of education for all, gradually address the educational inequalities among regions, between urban and rural areas, and among different social strata, and develop more inclusive and equitable quality education, thus achieving the goal of lifelong education for all.

According to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the sustainable development goal 11 is to “make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. China has been making great effort in this respect. With the advancement in science and technology, the concepts of green development, environmental friendliness, and fair development are gradually moving from theories to practices, guiding the construction and development of sustainable cities in China. Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, the overall process of China’s construction of sustainable cities and development can be divided into three stages: the initial practice stage (1986–2000), the stage focusing on transformation (2001–2012), and the stage emphasizing coordinated development and social fairness (2012 to present). During the process, China has proposed and carried out a series of pilot demonstrations of sustainable cities, eco-cities, garden cities, low-carbon cities, livable cities, resilient cities, sanitary cities, sponge cities, and circular economy cities. It has achieved remarkable results with valuable experience; meanwhile, it still faces many challenges considering the current practices. With the integration of planning for the national economy and social development, rural and urban development, land use, and other aspects, as well as the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, sustainable urban practices in China will receive more policy support and effective administrative support. As the largest developing country in the world, China’s practice in sustainable urban development undoubtedly has a broad demonstration effect and can contribute to global sustainable development.

China’s reform and opening-up over the past 40 years is in nature of an industrialization process. China’s industrial development conforms to the development goals, principles and spirit of inclusive and sustainable industrialization established in the United Nations’ Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This paper reviewed the main achievements obtained during China’s industrial development since the reform and opening up, and set forth the methods the Chinese Government had used to promote sustainable industrialization from five aspects, i.e. taking measures to promote infrastructure construction, paying high attention to scientific and technological innovations, boosting the integration of IT application with industrialization, advancing industrial energy conservation and emission reduction and developing small and medium enterprises. At the end, this paper pointed out that China’s industrial development and sustainable industrialization are not only important to the country itself, but also to the world’s economic development and sustainable development.

The experience in reform and opening up shows that China’s achievements in industrialization are largely attributed to its industrial openness towards the outside world and the international cooperation. As it enters the second decade of the 21st century, China’s industry has stepped into a new era of leading international development cooperation and promoting inclusive and sustainable growth in global industry, namely a period of developing international capacity cooperation supported by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As vigorously driven by the BRI, the international capacity cooperation has not only pushed forward the creation of new industrial cooperation models among developing countries, but also opened new paths and contributed Chinese approaches to regional and global industrial cooperations under the new situation, in particular for the implementation of the inclusive and sustainable industrial development goal set in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This mainly manifests as: dovetailing the top-level design with planning to build new mechanism-based capacity cooperation models, achieving cross-border infrastructure connectivity to promote trade, investment and industrial cooperation, constructing cooperation zones as an important platform for small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in capacity cooperation, breaking the financial bottleneck of regional development through diversified and open financial cooperation, and leading the leapfrog development of countries along the Belt and Road through technological cooperation and collaborative innovation.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been put into practice for nearly six years since it was put forward in 2013. While the achievements have attracted the world’s attention, it is also necessary to think over the way of building the “Road and Belt” with a higher quality. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (hereinafter referred to as the “2030 Agenda”) is the latest result of the United Nations’ sustainable development cause and the world’s consensus, with its authority being widely recognized. There are many similarities between BRI and the 2030 Agenda. Dovetailing them can help dispelling the international community’s worries, and promoting the international position and moral advantage of participating countries and friendly groups, and help introducing BRI to the rest of the world. The important theoretical and policy issues of dovetailing BRI with the 2030 Agenda involve three aspects, i.e. connotations, objectives and pathways. The core of the dovetail lies at the understanding of the dialectical relationship between actions and goals, and between the current and the future. Its purpose is to build a common discourse system with other countries, increase the supply of quality public goods, promote the global sustainable development process and facilitate the implementation of the sustainable development goals in the developing countries along the Belt and Road. The pathway is to dovetail the ideas, fields and mechanisms of BRI with those of the 2030 Agenda.

Following the entry into force of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, China has rapidly established key areas and priorities for its implementation, and Goal 14 focusing on sustainable marine development (hereinafter referred to as “SDG 14”) has been attached with great importance. This paper illustrates China’s implementation of SDG14 from four aspects: marine pollution control, conservation of marine environment, sustainable utilization of marine resources and international cooperation in global governance, and concludes that SDG14 has been implemented well on the whole in China. On this basis, the paper looks to the future sustainable development of ocean in China, and suggests improving the legal system, strengthening marine environmental monitoring, and advancing international cooperation for ocean sustainable development.

Countries all over the world are highly concerned about poverty. Both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations set ending poverty and hunger as their top priority. Whether in its own modernization drive or in the implementation of the United Nations’ MDGs and SDGs, the Chinese Government has always attached great importance to poverty issues, and actively explored measures to reduce poverty. This paper is designed to use relevant statistics to sum up China’s achievements and experience in implementing the MDGs so as to provide a policy basis for poverty reduction in China and beyond. This paper discovers that China’s achievements in poverty reduction involve four aspects: Eliminating hunger ahead of schedule, improving people’s nutritional status, enhancing food security and laying a solid foundation for sustainable agricultural development; China’s experience in poverty reduction includes the following: the government had paid high attention; economic development had served as the key to solve all problems; the development had been guided by planning and guaranteed by policies and regulations; the market mechanism had played its due role; emphasis had been placed on the pilot projects and step-by-step promotion strategy, as well as on development cooperation and experience exchanges. The Chinese Government had formulated specific plans to achieve the poverty reduction targets set in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Besides, the Rural Revitalization Strategy proposed by the Chinese Government in 2017 has become the essential strategy to solve the poverty-related issues in China’s development.