In the face of climate change and environmental crises in the twenty-first century, “ecology” has become a popular stand-in for laying out a new pathway for sus tainable living. Ecology, as a scientific term, focuses on the relationship between living organisms, and as such, it has been deployed as a tool to rethink the ways humans should approach and treat nature. Governments talk about ecology as a panacea for national and global environmental issues—something to reverse the destructive pathways of modern civilization by promoting environmental pro tection and a more harmonious relationship with nature. Since 2012, ecology has figured prominently in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) campaign “to build a new ecological civilization.”