Abstract
The global sustainable development agenda of the United Nations stresses governance and partnerships involving public and private actors as key elements for achieving the sustainable development goals. This paper relates the analysis of China’s growing engagement for sustainable development to the concept of collaborative governance. Based on the analysis of literature, policy documents, participation in conferences as well as interviews with experts, it proposes five factors to explain the promising developments of collaborative governance for sustainable development in China: political leadership, discourses, in-country expertise, institutional density and international cooperation. Against the backdrop of a strong government and tightened political supervision in many policy areas under the Xi Jinping administration, Chinese academics as well as practitioners largely agree that the “green development agenda” stands out in providing opportunities for the business community, think tanks and universities as well as nonprofit organisations to implement projects and gradually influence policies and practices related to the promotion of sustainable development.
Highlights
China’s engagement with the global sustainability agenda has important implications for the country domestically as well as globally
Compared to the periods of severe national economic crisis and strong domestic political struggles in the 1960s and 1970s in which authoritarian political rule and economic planning, restriction of civil freedom and social control were at their peak, the situation in contemporary China has much changed in the context of the market reforms after the open door policy, China’s integration into the world economy and it growing engagement in global policies, including the sustainable development agenda
The cross-cutting concept of sustainable development is adaptable to many policy issues of economic, social and environmental concern and presents a strong case for multi-stakeholder involvement in collaborative governance arrangements
Summary
China’s engagement with the global sustainability agenda has important implications for the country domestically as well as globally. China has outperformed other countries with its progress on the eight Millennium Development Goals, the predecessors of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UNDP, 2015). B. Kuhn 434 requiring developing as well as developed countries to undertake major efforts to integrate environmental and climate protection issues in their development agenda and strike a balance between economic, social and ecological development. China is known for its remarkable achievements in economic and social reforms and its growing nongovernmental sector, which includes many well- networked and relatively independent organisations dealing with issues related to sustainable development. With the exception of some chapters in Jing (2015) there are only few attempts (Ngar-in, Mah, & Hills, 2012; Brown, Gong, & Jing, 2010) to explicitly relate discourses on collaborative governance to issues of sustainable development in China. This paper operates with a definition of sustainable development that relates to the work of the United Nations and the frequently quoted Brundtland Report (United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development, WCED, 1987) and connects to the Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with a particular focus on the ecological dimension of the Agenda 2030
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