Sustainable Development and
Conditions of Population, Food and Agricultural
Development in China
Wang Shengjin
Professor,
Dean of Northeast Asian Studies College of
Jilin University
1. Introduction
Studies on sustainable development are already in the forefront of leading international scientific themes, and represent one of the basic principles to which countries give priority in preparing their development plans.
While the Chinese economy has been achieving remarkable development, its fundamental conditions, such as unceasing population growth, limited per-capita resources, pressure on the ecological environment increasing day by day, and fluctuations of long-term development, imply that the economy must take a sustainable development path characterized by Chinese-specific features. High-level consistency between population, resource, environment, and policy making factors will be the key to the harmony between human beings and nature.
So called development is the track of actions taken in a complicated system comprising nature, society and economy. This vector is considered to lead such a system in a more balanced, harmonized, and complementary direction. Under this definition of development, emphasis is placed on its irreversibility, breadth, and on the complexity of nature, society and economy. Accordingly, the term, "development", is treated as a clearly positive and beneficial process, and can be a base on which the healthiness of economic and social situations in different phases are diagnosed, inspected, and adjusted. Therefore, the author will attempt to discuss sustainable development from the viewpoints of population, food production, and agricultural development in China.
