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cological States explores China's ambitious ecological civilization project. It starts by tracing the genealogy of ecological thinking at the national level and then delves into its implementation and impacts at local and personal levels through detailed, comparative, and multi-perspective studies. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this beautifully written and eloquently articulated book. In this review, I will discuss the three main aspects of the book, focusing particularly on its insights into how planning is conceptualized and executed to realize the goals of ecological civilization.

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Central State: Planning for Optimization

Anyone who keeps up with news about China will likely be familiar with the term “ecological civilization.” Rather than accepting this concept at face value, Ecological States offers a detailed historiography of its evolution within the Chinese academic sphere. The book draws on the work of successive generations of prominent Chinese scientists, many of whom received their education in ecology and system sciences in the West. This historical perspective reveals how scientific thinking of ecology underpins and legitimizes the state's ideological approach to nature. Such statist ideology shapes planning practices around ecological civilization, where strategies like functional land-use zoning and environmental modeling are crucial for effective socio-environmental management.

In addition to discussing the science and technologies behind ecological civilization, Ecological States also explores the aesthetics influencing ecological and planning thought. These ideas are not merely based on “borrowed science” from Western theories but are closely woven with selected elements of traditional Chinese philosophies regarding human–nature relations. At the heart of this blend of Western–Eastern or North–South knowledge assemblage is a focus on optimizing the relationships among nature, society, economy, and aesthetics. Under this logic, nature, whether in its pristine or man-made forms, is endowed with multifaceted values: aesthetic-cultural, productive-developmental, and political-social. However, implicit in this state-driven optimization is the devaluation of rural infrastructure, economy, and aesthetics, which are often viewed as unsightly and environmentally harmful to justify their transformation and displacement. Thus, under the “Beautiful China” campaign, both human and non-human elements from rural areas are subjected to a process of purification and selection to align with the aesthetic standards of the state.^[1] 

Local State: Planning for Territorialization

After examining the genealogy of statist ideology, the book offers a detailed meso-level analysis of how the broad initiative of ecological civilization is translated into specific planning actions at the local level. According to the New-Type Urbanization Plan, 20 percent of all municipal regions must be designated for ecological protection. However, the central ministries issue only general guidelines for ecological protection planning and construction, with scant details on implementation. It hence falls to local governments to develop action plans that adhere to the central mandate.

Drawing on empirical cases from the southwestern provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, Ecological States provides a nuanced look at how local municipal states exert control over rural land, resources, and populations. This process, conceptualized as “ecological territorialization,” reveals how opportunistic municipal governments navigate the dual challenges of land and capital, ultimately converting these challenges into profits and power. In terms of land, driven by the central mandate, local municipal states leverage the legally and constitutionally vague definitions of land-use rights and the transferability of agricultural land quotas to optimize land usage. This is achieved through multi-purpose zoning during the urban–rural comprehensive planning process to ensure the inclusion of “ecological” uses. By so doing, the municipal states not only meet the ecological protection targets, but also repurpose rural land and housing for tourism, land leasing, and property development. Regarding capital, to overcome financial limitations in ecological protection and land management, the municipal government distributes land-use rights and responsibilities among “organizational stakeholders.” These stakeholders, including local bureaus, state-owned enterprises, and private companies, share the financial risks associated with land development, yet also appropriate economic benefits from the development.

The detailed analysis of municipal planning activities in Ecological State contributes two important insights. First, it demonstrates that the implementation of ecological civilization is more intricate than simply local states complying with a central mandate. The book reveals the contentious politics of land capture at the municipal level, illustrating how the creation of ecological zones sparks competition for land access and control. This competition raises critical questions about which government branches can access, control, and profit from the land, highlighting the political and internal rivalries within the Chinese government system. Second, the book provides an in-depth look at the institutional changes within planning agencies under the New-Type Urbanization Plan. The push for “spatial optimization” has led to the integration of various planning bureaus that previously operated independently. Rural areas, once considered “unplanned” or only subject to regional planning, are now incorporated into municipal governance. This centralization of planning responsibilities under the municipal government, along with the blending of rural and urban planning, introduces new institutional structures, internal dynamics, and power relations within China’s planning system.

Individual Encounters with Ecological States

The central ideology, enforced through local state actions of territorializing rural spaces, drives the politics of displacement among rural residents in areas designated for ecological protection. One of the stated goals of the National New-Type Urbanization Plan is to promote the orderly conversion of rural people into urban residents. Urban–rural comprehensive planning therefore not only reshapes institutions, politics, and landscapes, but also profoundly alters people’s livelihoods. The last part of Ecological States turns its focus to the villagers impacted by land expropriation and urbanization. The displacement of these individuals is justified by their perceived deficiencies. As a way to “urbanize” them, they are relocated to compact resettlement housing, often in high-rise buildings at the urban fringe.

While popular portrayals often depict displaced residents as victims of a powerful state, Ecological States challenges this narrative from two angles. First, the book explores how rural residents actively engage with state aesthetics through internalization and appropriation. It vividly illustrates how they symbolically and performatively employ rural nature to advance their socio-economic interests. By reshaping their daily livelihoods and marketing rural lifestyles for tourist consumption, these residents not only reinforce state ideology of the urban–rural difference, but also subtly counter eco-developmental imaginaries and practices.

Second, the book delineates the varied trajectories and transformations in livelihoods among ecological migrants. Some, capitalizing on their established positions and relationships within the system, find themselves in better situations after displacement. Others, however, receive minimal compensation and struggle to adapt to new urban lifestyles. For this latter group, displacement is not just a physical relocation but a severing of their livelihoods, cultural roots, and emotional bonds to their land, which makes their displacement a multifaceted loss – psychological, cultural, and sometimes existential. These diverse outcomes reflect not just individual capabilities and socio-economic status, but also the deep-seated disparities and complex politics surrounding land valuation and compensation. Collectively, these varied experiences with ecological migration challenge the official narratives of socio-environmental improvement promoted by state and planning agencies.

Urban–Rural Comprehensive Planning and Comparative Analysis

To conclude my review, I offer two provocations for further discussion. The first pertains to the broader implications of urban–rural comprehensive planning on future research into urban–rural dynamics. The urban–rural dynamics in China – characterized by migration flows, uneven development, and inequality – have long been focal points of scholarly research. Ecological States provides important insights into the institutional reorganization that not only brings rural planning into municipal governance regime, but also integrates specialized planning activities like environmental protection, economic development, and tourist promotion into municipal control. The book adeptly maps out these transitions and transformations. However, I am left pondering the potential long-term implications for development planning and spatial governance across China, beyond the provinces studied, under the National New-Type Urbanization Plan. Given that such institutional centralization also shifts power relations and resource distribution, how are the competing interests of various bureaus within a municipal region reconciled under this “new paradigm of planning" (87)?

My second question is related to the case comparisons. Ecological States provides detailed case analyses across locations with varying administrative ranks within the Chinese urban system. The two southwestern provinces examined are not only integral to the “Develop the West” initiative, but also serve as domestic frontiers for the Belt and Road Initiative. I am eager to learn more about the comparative aspects of these places and regions as presented in the book. How do their shared geographic and socio-environmental conditions influence their roles in the national ecological civilization process? How do differences in their administrative ranks, the micro-geographies of resource politics, locally specific planning capacities, and the dynamics of government-society-ethnic relations contribute to variations in their local planning activities?

Overall, Ecological States offers crucial contributions to fields of urban geography, development studies, and China studies, especially in areas of political ecology, state territoriality, and ecological displacement. This book is a timely and crucial resource, providing scholars and students with a layered understanding of ecological civilization in China.

[1] The book features a compelling quote that underscores the non-human elements, where the vice deputy of an environmental bureau emphasizes the need to beautify spaces through the “appropriateness of plant and species selection” (68).

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Ding Fei is Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University

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