Sustainable Rural Development Under Ecological Civilization: Two Mountains Theory, “Green Rural Revival”, and Post-Productivist Transition in Zhejiang

Existing studies of China’s overarching ideological framework for national development, “Ecological Civilization”, have focused narrowly on environmental governance; how it reshapes sustainable rural development remains underexplored. This paper pursues two analytically distinct tasks. First, it reconstructs the policy history of how President Xi Jinping’s “Two Mountains” theory was incorporated into the Eco-civilization framework and how Zhejiang Province’s “Green Rural Revival” (GRR) program, as a lived example of Eco-civilization, was elevated as the national template for rural development in 2024. Second, drawing on three cases from a sample of 21 villages in Zhejiang, it identifies three core practices of GRR and conceptualizes it as a post-productivist project: withdrawal from extractivist production, restoration of ecological resources, and development of facilities catering to urban consumption. We argue that GRR has directed rural development in Zhejiang toward a post-productivist transition and question the model’s replicability and sustainability as the central government promotes it nationwide.