Professor Fulong Wu gave his keynote speech ‘China’s urban environmental governance: An introduction’. He demonstrated environmental challenges faced by urban development process in China in the past decades. He emphasised new challenges brought by the new policy ‘Eco-civilisation’. Eco-civilisation is an important policy strategy and objective with profound positive influence over the government, the market and the society, while it poses short-term challenges in terms of industrial upgrade, local fiscal pressure, decrease in employment, etc. The government needs to cooperate closely with the market, including state-owned and private market actors, to achieve ‘Eco-civilisation’.

Professor Fangzhu Zhang gave her keynote speech ‘The Socio-ecological Fix by multi-scalar states: The Development of ‘Greenways of Paradise’ in Chengdu’. She reviewed the project ‘Greenways of Paradise’ in Chengdu and demonstrated its features and influences. She highlighted the cooperation between the state, the market, and the society in achieving socio-ecological fix. She called for making socio-ecological fix a key apsect of contemporary urban governance and incorporating environmental protection and sustainable development into urban planning.