Building a Harmonious Society through Greening: Ecological Civilization and Aesthetic Governmentality in China

Abstract

This article interrogates the shifting governmental logics and planning epistemologies that frame ecological civilization projects in China. The article argues how ecological urban projects such as the eco-city are undergirded by a form of aesthetic governmentality that has been deployed to promote a harmonious society in contemporary China by fusing bourgeois forms of aesthetic environmentalism with world-class urban aesthetics. Drawing on the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (SSTEC) flagship project, the article first highlights how eco-city construction in China problematizes and targets the urban environment as a legitimate domain of governmental action and argues how the emergence of an eco-aesthetic governmentality signals the shift from a dominant techno-scientific foundation of planning for sustainable cities toward an eco-aesthetic normativity that perpetuates the aestheticization of urban environmental politics in China. To this extent, the article sketches out the emerging contours of the Chinese (eco) aesthetic urban regime that increasingly incorporates aesthetic principles into governmental practices and city planning as a way to manage the problem of urban growth and to promote normative visions of a sustainable urban future in China. Key Words: aesthetics, China, eco-city, governmentality, urban sustainability.