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Green developmentalism and trade-offs between natural preservation and environmental exploitation in China

China is transitioning from the pursuit of growth at any cost to a stage in which the costs of growth and environmental sustainability have become a consideration. Career incentives for local government officials require them to simultaneously meet stringent targets for economic growth and environmental protection, but these goals are frequently in conflict. Against this backdrop, officials differentiate environment resources into two kinds: privileged and marginal, exploiting the latter to preserve the former. This ‘green self-contradiction’ is generated by two trade-offs: restriction–substitution relationship at the local level and supplement–compensation relationship at the national (trans-local) level. This trade-off framework is examined through two empirical cases: (1) a provincial policy of preservation of plain farmlands along with urbanization of outskirt hills in highland cities like Kunming and Yannan, and (2) a national scheme of stabilization for underground water in the Greater Beijing Region along with exploitation of cloud water from the distant Yangtze River provinces. We argue that these trade-offs embody the Chinese government’s ideological use of technology to preserve certain ‘green’ goals while maintaining a foundational ‘developmentalist’ logic, which we call ‘green developmentalism’.