Green Development Empowers the Leap in New Quality Productive Forces

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: “Green development is the hallmark of high-quality development; new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces.” This important thesis profoundly clarifies the intrinsic connection between new quality productive forces and green development, providing theoretical guidance for us to accelerate the development of new quality productive forces and promote the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, carrying significant and far-reaching theoretical and practical significance.

习近平总书记指出：“绿色发展是高质量发展的底色，新质生产力本身就是绿色生产力”。这一重要论断深刻指明了新质生产力与绿色发展的内在联系，为我们加快发展新质生产力、促进经济社会发展全面绿色转型提供了理论指引，具有重大而深远的理论与实践意义。

I. Green Development Is the Basic Requirement of New Quality Productive Forces

一、绿色发展是新质生产力的基本要求

New quality productive forces are an advanced form of productive forces that conform to the new development philosophy. Adhering to green development, breaking away from the traditional production and consumption model of “massive production, massive consumption, massive emissions,” and achieving the coordinated unity of economic and social development with ecological environmental protection, as well as the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, are their inherent requirements.

新质生产力是符合新发展理念的先进生产力质态，坚持绿色发展，摆脱传统的“大量生产、大量消耗、大量排放”的生产模式和消费模式，实现经济社会发展和生态环境保护协调统一、人与自然和谐共处，是其应有之义。

Marxism holds that the development of productive forces must attach great importance to the influence of natural conditions. Marx and Engels profoundly elucidated the role of natural conditions in human production and life. Natural conditions, as objects of labor and means of labor, participate in the production of use value and are a source of use value. This symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature means that if humans treat nature well, nature will also reward humans; but if they engage in disorderly exploitation and brutal plunder of nature, it will inevitably reduce natural forces and hinder economic development. Protecting the ecological environment means protecting natural conditions, protecting the potential and staying power of economic and social development, and enabling lucid waters and lush mountains to continuously exert ecological and economic-social benefits. Improving the ecological environment means increasing the stock of natural conditions, raising natural productive forces, and transforming lucid waters and lush mountains into mountains of gold and silver. As General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out, we must correctly handle

马克思主义认为，生产力的发展必须高度重视自然条件的影响。马克思、恩格斯深刻阐明了自然条件在人类生产生活中的作用。自然条件作为劳动对象与劳动资料，参与了使用价值的生产，是使用价值的源泉。人与自然的这种共生关系意味着，人类善待自然，自然也会馈赠人类，但如果无序开发、粗暴掠夺自然，必然会降低自然力，阻碍经济发展。保护生态环境就是保护自然条件，就是保护经济社会发展潜力和后劲，使绿水青山持续发挥生态效益和经济社会效益。改善生态环境就是增加自然条件存量，提高自然生产力，使绿水青山转化为金山银山。正如习近平总书记深刻指出的，要正确处理好经济发展同生态环境保护的关系，牢固树立保护生态环境就是保护生产力、改善生态环境就是发展生产力的理念。

Handling the relationship between development and protection is a worldwide challenge and an eternal subject facing the development of human society. After reform and opening up, while China's economy achieved rapid development, problems such as tightening resource and environmental constraints and ecosystem degradation became increasingly prominent, especially various types of environmental pollution and ecological damage occurring at a high frequency. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has made ecological civilization construction a fundamental plan for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, carrying out a series of pioneering work with unprecedented determination, intensity, and effectiveness. Ecological civilization construction has undergone historic, transformative, and overall changes from theory to practice. Since the New Era, China has supported an average annual economic growth of over 6% with an average annual energy consumption growth of 3%, making it one of the countries with the fastest reduction in energy intensity globally; it has built the world's largest carbon market and clean power generation system, with installed capacities of hydropower, wind power, solar power, and biomass power all ranking first in the world, and the production and sales of new energy vehicles ranking first in the world for many consecutive years. The requirements of green development are gradually being implemented throughout the entire process of economic and social development. Green is increasingly becoming the distinctive background of high-quality development, and the concept that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets has become a consensus and action of the entire Party and society.

处理好发展和保护的关系，是一个世界性难题，也是人类社会发展面临的永恒课题。改革开放以后，我国经济在实现快速发展的同时，资源环境约束趋紧、生态系统退化等问题越来越突出，特别是各类环境污染、生态破坏，呈高发态势。党的十八大以来，以习近平同志为核心的党中央把生态文明建设作为关系中华民族永续发展的根本大计，开展了一系列开创性工作，决心之大、力度之大、成效之大前所未有，生态文明建设从理论到实践都发生了历史性、转折性、全局性变化。新时代以来，我国以年均3%的能源消费增速支撑了年均超过6%的经济增长，是全球能耗强度降低最快的国家之一；建成全球规模最大的碳市场和清洁发电体系，水电、风电、太阳能发电、生物质发电装机都稳居世界第一，新能源汽车产销量连续多年居世界第一。绿色发展要求逐步落实到经济社会发展全过程，绿色日益成为高质量发展的鲜明底色，绿水青山就是金山银山的理念成为全党全社会的共识和行动。

At the same time, it must also be recognized that the current overall level of green development in China is not yet high enough, the foundation is still relatively weak, and the pressure of resources and the environment on development is increasing. On the new journey, cultivating and developing new quality productive forces and accelerating the realization of high-quality development inevitably require that the development of productive forces be development that conforms to the green development mode, that is, green productive forces. We must plan development from the height of harmony between humanity and nature, take the carrying capacity of resources and the environment as the premise and foundation, consciously confine economic activities and human behavior within the limits that natural resources and the ecological environment can bear, change the quantitative growth of the economy achieved through one-time extraction of material and energy from nature, and change the traditional extensive, extension-type mode of productive forces development, thereby promoting qualitative effective improvement and reasonable quantitative growth of development in the green transformation.

同时也要看到，当前我国绿色发展水平整体还不够高、基础还比较薄弱，资源环境对发展的压力越来越大。新征程上，培育和发展新质生产力，加快实现高质量发展，必然要求生产力的发展是符合绿色发展方式的发展，是绿色生产力。要站在人与自然和谐共生的高度谋划发展，把资源环境承载力作为前提和基础，自觉把经济活动、人的行为限制在自然资源和生态环境能够承受的限度内，改变通过一次性从大自然索取物质和能量来实现经济的数量型增长，改变传统粗放型、外延式的生产力发展模式，从而在绿色转型中推动发展实现质的有效提升和量的合理增长。

It must also be recognized that with the deepening of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, it is driving group major technological changes characterized by green, intelligent, and ubiquitous features. Green innovation achievements are constantly emerging, green industries are flourishing, and greening has become one of the most promising development fields. Promoting green and low-carbon development is the direction of the international trend and the general trend. The green economy has become the commanding height of global industrial competition. Developing new quality productive forces, expanding green industries, cultivating green economic growth points, and synergistically promoting carbon reduction, pollution reduction, greening, and growth are inevitable requirements for seizing the trend of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation.

还要看到，随着新一轮科技革命和产业变革深入发展，正在带动以绿色、智能、泛在为特征的群体性重大技术变革，绿色创新成果不断涌现，绿色产业蓬勃兴起，绿色化已成为最富前景的发展领域之一，推动绿色低碳发展是国际潮流所向、大势所趋，绿色经济已经成为全球产业竞争制高点。发展新质生产力，壮大绿色产业，培育绿色经济增长点，协同推进降碳、减污、扩绿、增长，是抓住新一轮科技革命和产业变革趋势的必然要求。

II. Accelerating the Green Transformation of the Development Mode

二、加快发展方式绿色转型

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we must accelerate the green transformation of the development mode to help achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality. Green development means exploring how to promote the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, integrating the reproduction of natural conditions into the production and living process, so that the ecological cycle and the production cycle can be organically combined according to natural laws and human needs, deeply cultivating the green background of the development of productive forces, and realizing what Marx proposed as "carrying out this material exchange with the least expenditure of force, under conditions most worthy of and most suitable for their human nature."

习近平总书记指出，我们必须加快发展方式绿色转型，助力碳达峰碳中和。绿色发展，就是要探寻如何促进经济社会发展全面绿色转型，将自然条件的再生产融入生产、生活过程，使生态循环与生产循环能够按自然规律与人的需求有机地结合起来，厚植生产力发展的绿色底色，实现马克思提出的“靠消耗最小的力量，在最无愧于和最适合于他们的人类本性的条件下来进行这种物质变换”。

Building a green production system. General Secretary Xi Jinping requires promoting the deep integration of industrial digitalization and intelligence with greening. The green production system can use intelligent and digital infrastructure to realize the green, low-carbon, and recyclable transformation of industries. The collection and sharing of industrial big data, the improvement of design and production precision, and the optimization of logistics achieve the integration of production with diverse needs, improve resource utilization efficiency in all links, minimize inventory, more accurately match material supply and demand, and reduce energy and material use. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate green technological innovation and the promotion and application of advanced green technologies, relying on technological innovation to solve the problems of green development. Build a modern industrial system supported by the real economy, strengthen green manufacturing, develop green services, expand the green energy industry, develop green low-carbon industries and supply chains, and continuously shape new drivers and new advantages for development. Strive to build a green, low-carbon, and circular economic system, accelerate the formation of an industrial structure with high technological content, low resource consumption, and minimal environmental pollution, greatly increase the degree of greening of the economy, base development on the efficient use of resources, strict protection of the ecological environment, and effective control of greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the resource and environmental costs of development, and continuously enhance the potential and stamina of development.

打造绿色生产体系。习近平总书记要求，推进产业数字化智能化同绿色化的深度融合。绿色生产体系可以借助智能化、数字化基础设施实现对产业绿色化、低碳、可循环的改造，工业大数据的收集与共享、设计和生产精度的提高、物流的优化，实现生产与多样化需求的相互融合，在各个环节提高资源利用效率，最大限度减少库存，更精准对接物资供需、减少能源与材料的使用。因此，要加快绿色科技创新和先进绿色技术推广应用，依靠科技创新破解绿色发展难题。建设以实体经济为支撑的现代化产业体系，做强绿色制造业，发展绿色服务业，壮大绿色能源产业，发展绿色低碳产业和供应链，不断塑造发展的新动能、新优势。着力构建绿色低碳循环经济体系，加快形成科技含量高、资源消耗低、环境污染少的产业结构，大幅提高经济绿色化程度，使发展建立在高效利用资源、严格保护生态环境、有效控制温室气体排放的基础上，降低发展的资源环境代价，持续增强发展的潜力和后劲。

Establishing a clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient energy system. Energy development and utilization are the foundation of the industrial revolution, and the industrial revolution is accompanied by energy transformation. The world is currently in the third energy transformation, and renewable energy will lay the energy foundation for the sustainable development of human society and economy. The smart grid based on information and communication systems is the fundamental platform for the renewable energy revolution. The smart grid allows for interactive production and consumption of energy, and the intelligent distribution of energy realizes the economization of the energy use process. In the context of the global energy transformation, we must promote the energy revolution, take the development of clean and low-carbon energy as the main direction for adjusting the energy structure, vigorously develop wind power and solar power generation, coordinate hydropower development and ecological protection, actively, safely, and orderly develop nuclear power, and accelerate the construction of a new power system; adhere to the simultaneous development of non-fossil energy and the clean and efficient use of fossil energy, ensuring the role of basic guarantee and supporting regulation for the development of new energy; focus on controlling fossil energy consumption, strengthen the construction of the energy production, supply, storage, and marketing system, and enhance the national oil and gas security guarantee capability. Build a clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient energy system to promote the realization of carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals.

建立清洁低碳安全高效的能源体系。能源开发利用是产业革命的基础，工业革命伴随着能源转型。目前世界正处于第三次能源变革中，可再生能源将为人类社会经济的可持续发展奠定能源基础。建立在信息通信系统基础上的智能电网是可再生能源革命的基础性平台，智能电网允许能源的交互生产和消费，能源的智能化分配实现了能源使用过程的经济化。在全球能源转型的大环境下，我们要推进能源革命，把发展清洁低碳能源作为调整能源结构的主攻方向，大力发展风电和太阳能发电，统筹水电开发和生态保护，积极安全有序发展核电，加快构建新型电力系统；坚持发展非化石能源与清洁高效利用化石能源并举，确保发挥兜底保障和对新能源发展的支撑调节作用；重点控制化石能源消费，加强能源产供储销体系建设，提升国家油气安全保障能力。构建清洁低碳安全高效的能源体系，促进碳达峰和碳中和目标的实现。

Improve the institutional system. Through the organic integration of an effective market and a competent government, the government’s role in managing natural conditions should be brought into play within the supply of natural conditions, guiding the participation of market forces to enhance the efficiency of the supply of natural conditions. Further improve the property rights system for natural resource assets, refine the regulatory system for natural resources, and delineate the red line for ecological protection, the bottom line for environmental quality, and the upper limit for resource utilization. Leverage the guiding role of the market, establish an ecological compensation system, and integrate resource and environmental factors such as carbon emission rights, energy use rights, water use rights, and pollution discharge rights into the overall framework of market-oriented allocation reform. Support market transactions such as transfer, assignment, mortgage, and equity participation, incentivize the initiative of various market entities, and improve the flexibility and efficiency of the supply of natural conditions.

完善制度体系。要通过有效市场和有为政府的有机结合，在自然条件的供给中发挥政府对自然条件的管理作用，引导市场力量的参与以提高自然条件供给的效率。进一步健全自然资源资产产权制度，完善自然资源监管体制，划定生态保护红线、环境质量底线、资源利用上线。发挥市场的导向性作用，建立生态补偿制度，把碳排放权、用能权、用水权、排污权等资源环境要素一体纳入要素市场化配置改革总盘子，支持出让、转让、抵押、入股等市场交易行为，激励各市场主体的积极性，提高自然条件供给的灵活性与效率。

III. Accelerate the Formation of a Green Lifestyle

三、加快形成绿色生活方式

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasizes vigorously advocating for simple, moderate, green, low-carbon, civilized, and healthy life concepts and consumption methods. A green lifestyle is a profound revolution of green development concepts in the realm of life. Lifestyle refers to the way people consume material means of subsistence. A green lifestyle provides demand-side impetus for the development of new quality productive forces. On one hand, green living itself can effectively reduce energy and material consumption and can also force changes in production methods; on the other hand, a green lifestyle shapes workers with green and low-carbon life concepts, stimulating the endogenous motivation of the whole society to jointly protect the ecological environment, thereby providing the high-quality workers needed for the development of new quality productive forces.

习近平总书记强调，大力倡导简约适度、绿色低碳、文明健康的生活理念和消费方式。绿色生活方式是绿色发展理念在生活领域的深刻革命。生活方式是指人们消费物质生活资料的方式。绿色生活方式为发展新质生产力提供了需求侧的力量，一方面绿色生活本身可有效降低能耗、物耗，还可倒逼生产方式的改变；另一方面，绿色生活方式还塑造了具有绿色低碳生活理念的劳动者，激发起全社会共同呵护生态环境的内生动力，为新质生产力发展提供所需的高素质劳动者。

Advocate and promote green lifestyles and consumption patterns. A green lifestyle is built upon the material foundation of a green production mode, which provides affordable green and low-carbon consumer goods. Marx pointed out that the mode of production of material life conditions the overall process of social, political, and spiritual life. In the new round of industrial revolution, supported by 3D printing and Internet of Things technologies, the reuse and repair economy can replace planned obsolescence and the throwaway product usage model; the rise of personal information and communication technology equipment means that more and more demands can be met through intangible services, with non-material consumption increasing, such as online transactions, online education, and online consulting; sharing platforms allow people to share items through communication, encouraging multi-user distribution models. Green production technologies effectively reduce the amount of materials and energy needed to meet individual consumption demands, giving birth to and nurturing green lifestyles and consumption patterns.

倡导推广绿色生活方式和消费模式。绿色生活方式建立在绿色生产方式的物质基础之上，绿色生产方式提供了低廉的绿色低碳消费品。马克思指出，物质生活的生产方式制约着整个社会生活、政治生活和精神生活的过程。在新一轮工业革命中，3D打印、物联网技术的支撑下，再利用和维修经济可取代计划报废和用后即丢弃的产品使用方式；个人信息通信技术设备的兴起使得越来越多的需求可以通过无形服务得到满足，非物质性消费越来越多，如在线交易、在线教育、在线咨询等；共享平台使得人民可以通过通讯来共享物品，鼓励多用户分销模式。绿色生产技术有效减少了满足个人消费需求所需的材料和能源数量，催生孕育了绿色低碳生活方式和消费模式。

Strengthen social environmental awareness. In the era of the digital economy, a prominent phenomenon is that consumers’ “prosumption activities” enable platforms to collect consumption demand data and then conduct precise advertising, amplifying consumers’ consumption desires and prompting unnecessary consumption. It is necessary to strengthen publicity and education on ecological civilization, incorporate content such as cherishing ecology, protecting resources, and caring for the environment into the national education and training system, firmly establish the concept of ecological civilization throughout society, and cultivate in the people a simple, moderate, green, low-carbon, civilized, and healthy life philosophy. Encourage citizens to prioritize conservation, establish life concepts and views on happiness that conserve resources and protect the environment, practice moderate consumption, and form a culture and conscious action of saving and intensiveness in clothing, food, housing, transportation, and travel. Guide and encourage consumers to purchase energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and recyclable products, green furniture, and building materials, minimize lifestyle behaviors that negatively impact natural ecosystems, and make green travel, water and electricity conservation, the “Clean Plate Campaign,” [1]1 The “Clean Plate Campaign” (光盘行动) is a nationwide public initiative in China, launched around 2013, that encourages people to reduce food waste by finishing the food on their plates, especially when dining out. and waste sorting habitual.

强化社会环境意识。数字经济时代，一个突出现象是，消费者的“产消活动”使得平台得以收集消费需求数据进而进行广告的精准投放，放大消费者的消费欲望促使人们产生不必要的消费。要加强生态文明宣传教育，把珍惜生态、保护资源、爱护环境等内容纳入国民教育和培训体系，在全社会牢固树立生态文明理念，使人民形成简约适度、绿色低碳、文明健康的生活理念。促使公民坚持节约优先，确立节约资源和保护环境的生活理念和幸福观，适度消费，在衣、食、住、行、游等方面形成节约、集约的文化和行动自觉。鼓励引导消费者购买节能环保再生产品，绿色环保家具、建材等，尽量减少对自然生态系统有负面影响的生活行为，让绿色出行、节水节电、“光盘行动”、垃圾分类等成为习惯。

Promote the green transformation of public lifestyles. The ecosystem is a whole, and a green lifestyle also involves the transformation of public lifestyles, such as waste recycling and green public transportation. This requires the synergistic effect of a competent government and an effective market, increasing the supply of intelligent and digital infrastructure. For example, through the green, low-carbon, and recyclable transformation of the waste recycling system, achieve a circular link between the production system and the living system, thereby improving resource output rates; increase the supply of charging stations and charging piles to promote the consumption of new energy vehicles; through the supply of intelligent and green public transportation vehicles, guide residents toward green travel, enabling people to fulfill their responsibilities and obligations to protect resources and the environment while fully enjoying the convenience and comfort brought by economic and social development, thereby promoting the sustainable development of humanity.

推动公共生活方式绿色转型。生态系统是一个整体，绿色生活方式还涉及公共生活方式的转变，如废弃物循环利用、绿色公共交通等，这需要有为政府与有效市场的协同作用，加大供给智能化、数字化基础设施建设。如通过废弃物循环利用体系的绿色低碳可循环改造，实现生产系统和生活系统循环链接，从而提高资源产出率；增加充电站和充电桩供给，促进新能源车消费；通过智能化绿色化公共交通工具的供给，引导居民绿色出行，让人民在充分享受经济社会发展带来便利和舒适的同时，履行保护资源、保护环境的责任和义务，促进人类永续发展。

Online editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑