AbstractSustainable development requires the balancing of economic growth with environmental protection. Since the late 1970s, China's government has been exploring a new path to improve its economic efficiency and decrease resource consumption and environmental pollution. Remarkable progress has been made due to the success of Deng's reform oriented to the market economy and the strengthening of environmental management. However, China has a long way to go to achieve the new development pattern because of the constraints imposed by its unbalanced economic structure and difficulties of moving from a planned to a market economy. China's experience in the 1980s shows that the two processes, sustainable development and economic reform, are closely related.