Exploring ecological modernisation and urban-rural eco-developments in China: the case of Anji County

The article explores the concept of the eco-economy in relation to planning and innovations taking place in the Anji district of China, Zhejiang Province. Through exploring a grounded process of ecological modernisation involving plan-led development processes, we argue that a new model of the localised eco-economy is developing based upon a cluster of complementary production and consumption spheres: settlement infrastructure developments, renewable energy and recycling, bamboo clusters, food clusters and ecological tourism (Non Jia Le). This represents to new form of more endogenous rural and urban eco-development in China which could be replicated as part of progressing the 'New Countryside Movement' more generally. The analysis suggests that concepts such as eco-economy, and their associated and unfolding dynamic rural and urban 'webs', are applicable in the case of Chinese environmental and economic development more generally; and that such processes could proliferate through careful and innovative plan-led processes which foster the re-appraisal of the endowments of regional and local resources.