(Translated from Chinese by Sherwin Lu)

A major distinction of the Chinese civilization from that of the West is that she has long since shed off the influence of earlier religious mythology and adopted a belief in the natural order of things as the ultimate source of truth instead of the supernatural God. Based on this belief, our remote ancestors placed ecological harmony above all other considerations when handling economical affairs instead of trying to conquer Nature through continuously ever-expanding large-scale industrial production.

As early as the West Zhou period, the Chinese already had a well-developed system of rules, called “monthly directives” (月令), for arranging agricultural activities according to the cycle of seasons, and a well-developed system for economical management. The harmony-with-Nature principle was embodied in the following three rules: arrange farming, fishing, hunting, and all other activities according to the natural cycles of plant and animal life; maintain well the ecological conditions for sustainable production, leaving enough leeway for Nature to keep recuperating herself; restrain from over-consumption and overspending of capital to make the best use of all natural resources.

Ban Gu (班固), an East Han historian and author of the Book of Han (《汉书》), has left us a detailed record of how the Chinese people had been directed to follow the harmony-with-Nature principle before and at his time. At the very beginning of the Book of Han • FamousTraders (Chap. 61) (《汉书•货殖传第六十一》), it says: People were told to make different proper uses of the land, rivers, hills, fertile soil, plains, marshy areas, etc., as suited to their specific topographical features and taught the necessary skills for crops planting and animal husbandry, so that all necessary materials for daily life and funeral needs such as grains, domestic animals, fishes, wild birds and beasts, firewood, timber, tools, etc. would be cultivated, bred, gathered or produced at different proper times and used sparingly. No logging or firewood-gathering was allowed before tree leaves and bushes began to wither; no entrapping of wild beasts before the ninth lunar month, nor of birds before the seventh every year; no premature taking of Nature’s gifts: no cutting of young trees or grass, no hunting for baby insects, fishes, or other animals, and no collecting of wild birds’ eggs, so that all living creatures would keep thriving, that Nature would keep functioning at her best and providing humans with their necessities unfailingly.

Anecdotes of Zhou Dynasty • King Wen’s Antemortem Remarks (Chap. 25) summarizes the economic rule of “no premature taking of Nature’s gifts” as follows: No chopping of wood in hills before the right season to preserve plant growth; no fishing in rivers and lakes before the right season to preserve aquatic growth; no eating of wild birds’ eggs or baby animals to preserve animal growth; no hunting out of season; no killing of young or pregnant sheep; no heavy work for young cattle or spurring of young horses. In a word, lands should be used as suited to their different features; everything treated with respect for its specific nature; and all affairs handled at their proper times.

As modern people have forgot about the classical Chinese principle of “no premature taking of Nature’s gifts”, all economic activities are now arranged in line with incessantly on-going industrial production without pausing for necessary seasonal adjustments, resulting in severe destruction and waste of biological resources. Take China for example. Although the rule of “no marine fishing in summer” has been implemented since 1995, people are still doubting: Is that two months of no-fishing an adequate guarantee for the recovery of Nature’s reproductive capabilities? As a matter of fact, due to long years of over-fishing, many coastal inhabitants have had to give up fishing as their means of livelihood.

At that remote time when people knew no scientific technology as exists today, the Anecdotes of Zhou Dynasty• King Wen’s Antemortem Remarks could not have recorded Nature’s sustainable productive capability in such terms as “annual accumulated increase”, but it clearly specifies: No killing of pregnant female animals; No logging of young trees; No missing of farming season. If, after ten years, a state has an accumulated reserve equal to ten years’ total consumption, it would be looked up to by all other states as their leader; if the reserve is enough for five year’s consumption, the state is already a dominating power; if it does not have enough reserve for one year’s use, it would surely be conquered by some other state.

The virgin forests in China’s Lesser Khingan Mountains were first ravaged by Japanese occupiers and twice more by the Chinese themselves later until their near total destruction by the end of last century. As contrasted with that of our ancestors, is not the present-day economic policy too savage? Now we are talking about sealing off the mountains for the forests to re-grow, but it might take  up to a hundred years for them to regenerate and grow to their original size and it would not be that long, if our policy is not changed, before all forests be wiped off the earth by modern industry. If we are still concerned about the well-being of our future generations, about the continuation of our human civilization, we must take action now to preserve Nature’s productive capablities.

King Wen’s Antemortem Remarks also advocates “restraint in use of resources”, i.e., restraint from over-consumption and over-spending, by admonishing people against indulgence and luxury, against extravagancy and wastefulness, against vain show-off and flashy display: for instances, to save cost for the people, no carvings are necessary on hall pillars, and thatched roofs are good enough.

 Guan Tzu • Value Weighing (《管子 • 轻重》), a classic of ancient Chinese economics, goes further to sharply oppose consumerism and unchecked expansion of capital, especially at a time when the world is divided into rivaling states and resources are scarce:

“Duke Huan （齐桓公）said, ‘Qin She advised me saying that without decorating the canopies and curtains of the carriages, without demands for more new clothes, needlecraft cannot develop; that without ritual sacrifice of animals, for instances, cattle for vassals and sheep for their ministers as required by the rules for propriety, animal husbandry would not thrive; that without building large and beautiful palaces and pavilions lumbering would not prosper. Was he right or not?’
“‘That is a wrong approach,’ answered Guan Zhong (管仲).
“‘Why wrong?’ asked Duke Huan.

“‘This was an approach good for that territory as vast as a million sq. li under the sole unified reign of the Son of Heaven [i.e., the king], who had direct authority over his vassals governing some ten thousand sq. li each while a coastal viscount or a baron merely five or two-to-three thousand sq. li respectively. They were closely related with and relied on each other like the trunk and limbs of a human body. Therefore, any emergent need can be met by collecting from wherever there was a surplus or no urgent need. So, even if the surplus wealth was scattered among the people, the king did not have to worry.

 “‘But now, if a state with a small territory has to confront some aggressive big power, then the peasants, men and women, have to contribute to the state government part of the fruits of their year-round hard work in the fields and at the loom. This is not meant to infringe on people’s interests or to go against their will. It has to be so because, without resources readily available in state storage, the government administrators would not be able to function; without sufficient wealth at hand, they would have little to offer their subordinates as incentives. Therefore, Qin She’s advice for extravagant spending is not applicable to small states facing threats from outside.’”

To encourage consumption and expand credit has been the major driving force for economic growth in the West since Keynes. Evil consequences of such expansion of capital with its ever-growing power are already so obvious as to be threatening the survival of the human race. For example, to reduce the tail gas released from vehicles into the environment that harms public health, the California state of the USA passed the Zero Emissions Mandate in the 1990s stipulating that at least 2% of the cars sold in 1998 should be zero-emission ones and the proportion should increase to 10% in 2003. And the electric vehicle has long since been invented, which is superior in protecting the environment and saving energy and cost, superior to all those vehicles using oil or hybrid power or hydrogen-cell. But under the pressure of US oil giants, it has been driven out of the market and smashed to pieces in the Arizona desert.

The documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, in which ex-Vice President Al Gore of US plays a special role, shows to the world with rich and scientifically convincing data that global warming is causing serious disasters while mankind, especially the US, does have the technological resources for solving this problem, but that, under the powerful influence of the oil companies, the US has chosen to ignore this grave issue all along and some government officials closely related to those special interest groups even went so far as to tamper with scientists’ reports on this issue to suit their will. So, in the end, Gore has to admit that political will has become the most scarce energy resource.

While vital resources for the mankind are quickly running out, the Western countries are still not willing to give up their consumerist policies. When they cannot find enough at home, they would stoop to grabbing from other parts of the world through economic trickery or even military wars. When will humanity be free from such piratical acts? At this very moment when the author is typing these sentences, the Iraq war fueled by Middle East petroleum is still raging on!

In early West Zhou China three thousand years ago, all natural resources were under the watch of government-appointed authorities with different officials taking care of different kinds of resources. For instance, the official in charge of mines would set boundaries and issue restraining orders at metal mines and quarries. He scheduled dates for mining projects, chose the sites, drew maps for the miners, and make inspections to see nobody violated the rules. But unfortunately, in present-day China, the mining of “rare earth metals”, for instance, had not been placed under direct government control until 2007, and unmonitored mining of other minerals has reached a mind-boggling scale. According to Mr. Zijian Yang of the Material Reserve Research Institute under the State Material Reserve Administration, “Due to the lack of effective management in the mining and trading processes, vast quantities of valuable resources are flowing out of the country for low returns. As predicted by experts, many “advantage-affording mineral resources” will be running out by the year 2020. Therefore, China is in extremely urgent need of a state mechanism for protecting such mineral resources.”

Another example is the marble called “Han white jade” for its extraordinarily refined texture and its earliest use dating back to Han dynasty. China only has limited reserves of it. So, until recently, it had always been used sparingly, i.e., only for national landmark architectures, all other uses being prohibited. But since the undiscriminating adoption of Western-style “free market” economic policies, its resources have been quickly exhausted. So, for the building of China Millennium Monument, a kind of coarse white marble was used passing for “Han white jade”. As a result, cracks appeared on the monument not long after it was erected. What an irony! What a shame!

The regulation of consumption and of capital is an important component of the harmony-with-Nature principle in classical Chinese economics. Regulation of capital is, of course, not the same as the elimination of capital. The Anecdotes of Zhou Dynasty repeatedly emphasizes that the state should see to it that the merchants have sufficient capital at hand. Lü Shang (吕尚), the historically known early Zhou statesman, called farming, handicraft, and commerce the “three great treasures” (see his Six Secret Teachings • On Civil Administration • Six Rules, 《六韬•文韬•六守》). And this is also quoted in Records of the Grand Historian • Famous Traders (《史记•货殖列传》): “Without farming, food will be scarce; without handicraft, supplies will run short; without commerce, all ‘three treasures’ will vanish; without control of natural resources, state finance will suffer.” The purpose of the   regulation of capital in classical Chinese economic practice is to keep adjusting the relations between different interest groups towards a relative balance, in contrast to the present-day situation in, for instance, America where certain interest groups have been holding the whole society hostage through the control and manipulation of capital.