Report on the World’s Bay Areas

The origin of the study: Cracking the contemporary dilemma of the development and progress of civilization

Now on the desk is the manuscript of the Report on the World’s Bay Areas: Development Index. After three consecutive years of uninterruptedly tracking and analyzing the development of the global bay areas, our report has gradually gained wide recognition from domestic and foreign research institutes and higher education institutions, as well as the great attention of the political and business circles and the public in the international bay areas, including the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It has caused an increasingly large reverberation in the field of theory and practice. We are deeply gratified and fortunate that our generation insists on “a just cause with great support.”

From the historical dimension, early human civilization appeared in Mesopotamia, as well as near the Nile, the Ganges River, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River; “the existence of these rivers can make up for the lack of rainfall, but it also means that people are faced with the arduous task of the development of irrigation systems and their corresponding socio-political organization.” From this point of view, civilization has never been easily attained; its formation requires subjective human effort, yet it is heavily dependent on natural conditions such as mountains, rivers and climate. Human beings maximize the use of natural resources by collaborating in organized productive labor. The gentle watersheds of large rivers, as well as the alluvial fans in the middle and lower reaches of the rivers, especially where the rivers meet the seas, certainly seem to be capable of nurturing civilization. Therefore, the essence of human civilization is the way in which human production, life and other social activities are organized. For example, in the quest for the cultivation and domestication of animals, human beings gradually moved beyond the original hunting and gathering activities to more organized production, living and interaction, which was the agricultural revolution. This gave humans the power to transcend their own physiological limitations and thus they potentially gained power over other animals. At the same time, this became the foundational cause of class differences in the future of human beings when there were groups that attempted to monopolize the power of interpreting the gods, distributing the means of subsistence, and managing the collaboration of production, so that human beings were able to obtain orderly living space. As a result, classes and states emerged, which marked the birth of human civilization. Under the organization and promotion of the state, human beings have continuously promoted the development of civilization around the economic, political, cultural, social and ecological domains, so that human civilization has continued to differentiate, deepen and develop in the aspects of material civilization, political civilization, spiritual civilization, social civilization and ecological civilization. With the development of productive forces, human civilization has not only evolved in terms of content, but also iterated in terms of form, thus driving human civilization from antiquity to modernity and even to a higher stage. In the process of continuously promoting the advancement of civilization, human beings themselves have developed and society has become advanced.

As the Western world entered the Renaissance era, Western European countries, through the revival of Ancient Greek civilization, also absorbed the essence of the world’s civilizations (including Eastern civilization), resulting in world-renowned civilizational achievements, which were mainly manifested in the great material abundance and notable achievements brought about by science and technology. After industrialization, the spread of Western civilization to the whole world accelerated, and the “survival of the fittest” became the instrumental concept of the “rationality” of the behavior of Western countries. Modernization brought about material wealth and material civilization—after industrialization, Western civilization accelerated its spread around the world, and the Western countries that were the first to achieve modernization used their great material power to practice colonialism and imperialism abroad, and “survival of the fittest” became the theory by which Western countries rationalized and justified their colonization of other parts of the world.

The current “change on a scale unseen in a century” is accelerating, and the world, the typical home of human beings, is faced with several governance problems—“human civilization has come to an unprecedented crossroads” and is facing a great dilemma. On the one hand, we are confronted with a mountain of global governance issues, with huge risks and challenges threatening the survival and continuity of human civilization; on the other hand, today’s world system is a system of nation-states dominated by the early developing industrialized countries. When the early developing countries feel that the cost of global governance is higher than the benefit, they will choose to reverse globalization and return to their own comfort zones, and let the later-developing countries shake in the wind and rain.

This question of the times is a global dilemma, and it must be solved by developing an overall idea, through a broad historical horizon, and by looking for the answer through the interpretation process of human civilization. The world’s problems can only be solved through the collective participation of the people worldwide, which inevitably requires that a country or civilization that can transcend selfishness and is willing to integrate and develop its own interests with the common interests of the whole world come forward and make efforts for the construction of a global community with a shared future, which is obviously something that the Western civilization of the past and the present has been unable to provide.

Arnold Toynbee predicted as early as the last century in his magnum opus, A Study of History, that “the Chinese have maintained and preserved a great civilization. China holds the world’s hope, and the Chinese civilization is where humanity’s future lies.” Chinese civilization, with its outstanding performance in over 5,000 years of history of civilization, should step forward to provide solutions to the dilemma of the development of human civilization in the twenty-first century. Many knowledgeable people from the economic, cultural, academic and media sectors have already realized that “the general trend of the development of civilization is to continuously promote a wider and deeper degree of collaboration among all human beings, and modern civilization is the sum of things created to promote the survival and development of all human beings as well as to reduce the cost of collaboration.” Chinese civilization, because of its characteristics as a “civilization of the world,” has the ability to unite the people of the world in a new type of collaboration, and can “bring the human world to a new realm that transcends narrow interests and strives to create greater common welfare.”

Chinese modernization: Building a new form of human civilization

It should be said that the elements and forms of modern civilization are constantly being generated and developed in the process of modernization. After a century of struggling, China has consistently adhered to and developed socialism with Chinese characteristics, and in the process of taking a new path of modernization, it has gradually created a new form of civilization that is dynamic, inclusive and sustainable. The key aspects of this new form of civilization are mainly reflected in the following: first of all, the independence, stability and development of the country have always been achieved under the firm leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and the people’s main position has been established; second, socialism with Chinese characteristics organically integrates material civilization, political civilization, spiritual civilization, social civilization and ecological civilization, and builds a multi-level and diversified modern civilization system, which not only focuses on economic development, but also on the improvement of the political system, cultural prosperity, social harmony, and the protection of the ecological environment. Finally, these basic concepts have been solidified through the guiding principles of the CPC. In the process of comprehensively deepening the reform, the main elements, the content and the elements of the mechanism of this new form of modern civilization have all been generated, and the organic relationships among them have been confirmed in an institutionalized manner.