Can Confucianism save China's environment?

It is probably the oldest recorded ecological comment in the world. Some 2,300 years ago the Chinese philosopher Meng Zi, known in the West as Mencius, noted the impact of human activity on the natural world around him.

He wrote: "The woods on Ox Mountain were once beautiful. Because they were on the edge of a large country, they have been attacked with axes and hatchets, so how could they remain beautiful? … People seeing its denuded state assume that it never had been otherwise, endowed with rich resources. Yet how can this state be the true nature of this mountain?"

In modern China, it is almost impossible to see "the true nature" of almost any part of the country. Smog means that traditional views of the hills from many towns and cities have long since disappeared, only rarely reappearing when the wind blows in a certain direction. Rivers have been canalised and mountains can be moved. So how can China rediscover the true nature of nature? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is through its most ancient philosophies and religions.

Meng Zi was one of the founding philosophers of Confucianism. For over 2,000 years, this great philosophy shaped China through its bureaucrats and its officials with its strict codes of conduct.

Since the fall of the last Imperial Dynasty in 1911, Confucianism had been under attack for being imperial, obscurantist, sexist, feudal and basically a hindrance to the modernisation of China. Yet today Confucian ideas are back in favour and Confucianism is engaging radically with contemporary society on issues where human activity has disturbed the balance between heaven and earth.

Last month, a major new development in Confucian ideas and commitments was launched. The Confucianists of China issued their first ever statement on the environment. In it they questioned the destructive basis of contemporary Chinese development and proposed instead a vision of humanity playing a caring role, not a destructive one.