On Nov. 8, China is set to hold the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. We already know who will be the next party leader: Vice President Xi Jinping. What we don’t know is what matters: Does Xi have a “Chinese Dream” that is different from the “American Dream?” Because if Xi’s dream for China’s emerging middle class — 300 million people expected to grow to 800 million by 2025 — is just like the American Dream (a big car, a big house and Big Macs for all) then we need another planet.
11月8日，中国将召开中国共产党第十八次全国代表大会。我们已经知道谁将是党的下一位领导人：现任国家副主席习近平。我们不知道的才真正重要：习近平有一个有别于“美国梦”的“中国梦”吗？因为，如果习近平带给中国正在兴起的中产阶层（3亿人，到2025年预计将增至8亿人）的憧憬与美国梦（大型汽车、大房子，大家都吃麦当劳的巨无霸）一样，那么人类将需要再有一个地球。
Spend a week in China and you’ll see why. Here’s a Shanghai Daily headline from Sept. 7: “City Warned of Water Resource Shortage.” The article said: “Shanghai may face a shortage of water resources if the population continues to soar. ... The current capacity of the city’s water supply was about 16 million tons per day, which is able to cover the demand of 26 million people. However, once the population reaches 30 million, the demand would rise to 18 million tons per day, exceeding the current capacity.” Shanghai will hit 30 million in about seven years!
在中国呆一个星期，你就会明白为什么。9月7日《上海日报》(Shanghai Daily)的一个标题是：“本市水资源短缺的警告。”这篇文章称：“如果上海人口继续快速增长，就可能面临水资源短缺……目前本市供水能力为每天大约1600万吨，能够满足2600万人需要。不过，一旦人口达到3000万，需求将增至每天1800万吨，超出目前供水能力。”上海的人口将在大约7年后突破3000万！
“Success in the ‘American Dream, ’ ” notes Peggy Liu, the founder of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, or Juccce, “used to just mean a house, a family of four, and two cars, but now it’s escalated to conspicuous consumption as epitomized by Kim Kardashian. China simply cannot follow that path — or the planet will be stripped bare of natural resources to make all that the Chinese consumers want to consume.”
中美清洁能源合作组织（Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy，简称Juccce或“聚思”）创始人刘佩琪(Peggy Liu)指出：“成功实现‘美国梦’过去只是指一栋房子、一个四口之家和两辆汽车，但现在已升级到炫耀性的消费，就像（美国娱乐界名媛）金·卡戴珊(Kim Kardashian)所体现的。中国根本不能照搬这条道路，否则为了生产中国消费者想要消费的一切，地球的自然资源将被开采得一干二净。”
Liu, an M.I.T. graduate and former McKinsey consultant, argues that Chinese today are yearning to create a new national identity, one that merges traditional Chinese values, like balance, respect and flow, with its modern urban reality. She believes that the creation of a sustainable “Chinese Dream” that breaks the historic link between income growth and rising resource consumption could be a part of that new identity, one that could resonate around the world.
毕业于麻省理工学院(MIT)、曾是麦肯锡(McKinsey)咨询师的刘佩琪辩称，当今中国人渴望创建一种新的国家认同，融合中国的传统价值观（如平衡、尊重和流动）与现代城市现实。她相信，创建一个可持续的“中国梦”，打破收入增长与越来越高的资源消费之间的历史关联，有望成为中国人新的国家认同的一部分，并可能在世界各地产生共鸣。
So Juccce has been working with Chinese mayors and social networks, sustainability experts and Western advertising agencies to catalyze sustainable habits in the emergent consuming class by redefining personal prosperity — which so many more Chinese are gaining access to for the first time — as “more access to better products and services, not necessarily by owning them, but also by sharing — so everyone gets a piece of a better pie.”
因此，聚思与中国一些城市的市长和社交网络、可持续发展专家以及西方广告公司开展合作，在新兴的消费阶层中催生可持续的习惯，具体做法就是将个人富裕（大批中国人平生第一次达到这种境界）重新定义为“更畅通地获取更好的产品和服务——未必拥有这些产品和服务，共享也是一种获取的途径——使每个人都分得一块更美好的蛋糕。”
That means, among other things, better public transportation, better public spaces and better housing that encourages dense vertical buildings, which are more energy efficient and make shared services easier to deliver, and more e-learning and e-commerce opportunities that reduce commuting. Emphasizing access versus ownership isn’t just more sustainable, it helps ease friction from the differences between rich and poor. Indeed, Juccce translates Chinese Dream as “Harmonious and Happy Dream” in Mandarin. (“Green” doesn’t sell in China.)
这意味着更好的公共交通、更好的公共空间、更好的住房（鼓励更具能效，也更易于提供共享服务的密集高楼），以及更多的电子学习和电子商务机遇（减少通勤）。强调获取（而非拥有）不仅更可持续，它还有助于缓和贫富差距所造成的摩擦。的确，聚思对中国梦的诠释是“和谐与快乐之梦”。（“绿色”在中国不是一个卖点。）
Chinese are more open to this than ever. A decade ago, the prevailing attitude was, “Hey, you Americans got to grow dirty for 150 years. Now it is our turn.” A couple of weeks ago, though, I took part in the opening day of Tongji University’s Urban Planning and Design Institute in Shanghai and asked students whether they still felt that way. I got a very different answer. Zhou Lin, a graduate student studying energy systems, stood up and declared, with classmates nodding, “You can politicize this issue as much as you want, but, in the end, it doesn’t do us any good.” It is not about fairness anymore, he said. It is in China’s best interest to find a “cleaner” growth path.
中国人越来越愿意接受这种观念。10年前，中国社会的主流观点是：“嗨，你们美国人靠污染环境增长了150年。现在轮到我们了。”不过，两周前，我参加了上海同济大学城市规划设计研究院的一个活动，其间我问学生们，他们是否还这么认为？结果我得到一个非常不同的回答。能源系统专业的研究生周林（音）站起身来，在同学们点头支持下宣告：“你可以把这个问题政治化，做足文章，但归根结底，这对我们没有好处。”他表示，问题的关键已经不是公平与否。找到“更清洁”的增长道路符合中国的最佳利益。
To say China needs its own dream in no way excuses Americans or Europeans from redefining theirs. We all need to be rethinking how we sustain rising middle classes with rising incomes in a warming world, otherwise the convergence of warming, consuming and crowding will mean we grow ourselves to death.
说到中国需要有自己的梦想，绝不意味着美国人或欧洲人就不需要重新定义他们的梦。在这个不断变暖的世界上，我们都需要反思如何支撑不断崛起且收入越来越高的各国中产阶层，不然的话，变暖、消费和拥挤等趋势相结合，将意味着人类在增长中走向灭亡。
China’s latest five-year plan — 2011-15 — has set impressive sustainability goals for cutting energy and water intensity per unit of G.D.P. All of these goals are critical to the greening of China, but they are not sufficient, argues Liu. With retail sales growing 17 percent a year since 2005 and urban incomes up 150 percent in the last decade, “the government must also have a plan to steer consumer behavior toward a sustainable path, ” adds Liu. “But it doesn’t yet.”
中国最新五年计划（涵盖2011-15年）制定了令人印象深刻的可持续发展目标，拟降低每单位国内生产总值(GDP)的能源和水资源消耗强度。刘佩琪提出，这些目标对于中国的环保事业都十分关键，但它们还不够。鉴于零售销售自2005年以来每年增长17%，而城市收入在过去10年里增长150%，“政府还必须拿出一套指引消费者行为走上可持续道路的计划，”刘佩琪补充说。“但政府尚未做到这一点。”
So Xi Jinping has two very different challenges from his predecessor. He needs to ensure that the Communist Party continues to rule — despite awakened citizen pressure for reform — and that requires more high growth to keep the population satisfied with party control. But he also needs to manage all the downsides of that growth — from widening income gaps to massive rural-urban migration to choking pollution and environmental destruction. The only way to square all that is with a new Chinese Dream that marries people’s expectations of prosperity with a more sustainable China. Does Xi know that, and, if he does, can he move the system fast enough? So much is riding on the answers to those questions.
因此，与他的前任相比，习近平面对两项非常不同的挑战。他需要确保共产党继续执政（尽管已经觉醒的公民要求改革），而这进而要求更多的高增长，让人民对党的控制继续感到满意。但同时他也需要掌控高增长的所有负面因素，从不断扩大的收入差距到大规模的农村-城市移民，从令人窒息的污染到环境破坏。调和这一切的唯一方式，就是推出一种新的“中国梦”，融合人民的致富憧憬与更可持续的中国。习近平知道这一点吗？如果知道，他能以足够快的速度推动体制采取行动吗？这些问题的答案事关重大。
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