Nation's protection model offers example to world. Hou Liqiang reports.
"Environmental protection" is now a ubiquitous term in China. However, back in 1972, when the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held, it was still an alien concept, missing even from Chinese dictionaries.
It's no surprise then that when Qu Geping, 94, the first director of the country's Environmental Protection Agency, recounted China's participation in the conference, he said China's decision to join the event "stunned the international community".
Half a century on, however, China has stunned the international community in a very different way because of its rapid progress in pollution control and its swift transformation into a leader in green transition, experts said.
Once a laggard in global environmental governance, China has evolved into a solution provider, with many environmental mechanisms instructive for the international community established under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, they said.
Laggard and learner
In a written address to a 2022 event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1972 conference in Stockholm — the first world conference to make the environment a major issue — Qu emphasized the special role the conference had played in China's environmental process.
It "made us begin to wake up to existing environmental problems", he said. Inspired by the conference, China held its first National Environmental Protection Conference in 1973, which marked the beginning of China's environmental protection efforts.
Back then, the country had to learn a lot from the international community, according to Qu. For example, factories and industrial management considered emitting pollutants as a given. There was a prevailing sentiment in the industrial sector that likened pollution to a natural by-product of production, stating, "Just as people eat and excrete, factories produce and pollute", Qu recounted in the preface of a book titled Environmental Awakening.
The country then included the principle of "whoever causes pollution is responsible for its treatment" into its 1979 Environmental Protection Law, the country's first environmental law, to address the problem, which was borrowed from the "polluter pays principle" in Western countries, he added.
He said half of the eight major environmental management institutions the country established in 1989 were borrowed from market economies, including pollutant emission permits, environmental impact assessments and pollution discharge fees.
Ma Jun, a journalist-turned-environmentalist, has been committed to environmental protection since the early 1990s. In his initial years of involvement in environmental protection, he observed that China still heavily relied on external sources for guidance and inspiration.
Encountering severe water pollution during his journalistic travels across China in the 1990s, Ma authored China's Water Crisis in 1999, and also embarked on a quest for a solution.
Initially, China heavily relied on Western environmental protection models, replicating concepts and management systems, with some elements in China's laws on water and air pollution control directly borrowed from Western legislation, said Ma, who founded the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing in 2006.
Enforcement of these laws, however, was hindered due to a delicate relationship in which local governments depended on polluting companies for sustained economic growth.
To address this, Ma called on the national legislature to include in the law the practice of environmental information disclosure, which is observed in many places overseas, so as to increase public involvement in environmental protection. Persistent efforts eventually saw articles on environmental transparency inscribed into the revised National Environmental Protection Law in 2014.
Trailblazer
China has excelled in this mechanism compared to Western countries in terms of real-time disclosure, even as the legalization process continued. In 2013, the nation began disclosing the density of pollutants like PM2.5 in an hourly fashion. A year later, thousands of key polluters were also mandated to report wastewater data every two hours and exhaust emissions hourly.
This groundbreaking step established China as a leader in real-time environmental information disclosure. When Ma presented this innovation to experts from the United States during an exchange program, it left them impressed.
"Recalling the one-sided nature of past exchanges, where Chinese counterparts eagerly absorbed knowledge about air and water pollution control, as well as judicial systems in the US, one expert said now they also need to learn from China," he recalled.
Such an information disclosure system has evolved into a public service that boosts China's green competitiveness globally, as it aids companies in selecting environmentally responsible suppliers, lowering costs in establishing green supply chains in China, Ma said.
He said the potential of information disclosure, as well as public participation, has also been effectively tapped in China's unique central environmental inspection, teams of which report to a central group headed by a vice-premier.
Under the inspection mechanism, teams headed by ministerial-level officials delve into grassroots areas to uncover environmental violations based on public complaints.
No matter where they go, they first make public various channels for reporting violations, Ma said. Violations they unearth and even the rectification process are all made public.
Moreover, he has found increasingly more countries turning to China for its experiences in successfully restoring clean air and blue skies over Beijing within just a decade.
In 2013, when Beijing started to monitor PM2.5, the annual average concentration of the particulate matter in the capital stood at 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter. Last year, however, the average density of the air pollutant had fallen to only 32 mcg/cubic m.
In recent years, Ma said, his organization has been engaging in exchanges about China's air pollution control experiences with stakeholders from countries including Mongolia, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand.
He mentioned that he and his colleagues have been traveling extensively, particularly since the second half of last year, either to take part in exchange programs or attend conferences focused on China's successful air pollution control strategy.
In another development, Chu Yangxi, an associate research professor at the Beijing-based Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, along with two other Chinese environmental experts, visited haze-plagued Lahore at the invitation of the government of the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province in January this year.
Local authorities extended their invitation to the trio, hoping to learn from China's remarkable success in air pollution control in Beijing, according to the scientist.
Having lived in China for more than 20 years, Dimitri de Boer, regional director for Asia at environmental law charity ClientEarth, commended China for its humble approach in assimilating international experiences and devising strategies tailored to its unique national circumstances.
"I think the Chinese government has always been very interested in learning from, sort of looking at what are the best approaches around the world very actively. There have been so many patient dialogues on these things.
"I think China has also developed its own ways to deal with its pollution, developing systems that are suitable for the Chinese context and characteristics," he said.
China, for example, now has specialized environmental courts and environmental public education by prosecutors. "That's very special. And there are very few other countries that have taken that approach... It's actually been very effective," he noted.
China now has more experience and technologies that are world-leading, he said, citing green technologies, electric vehicles, and solar and wind energy as examples.
More than four decades ago, China was only able to manufacture microturbines for off-grid power generation due to the lack of necessary technology and research and development capabilities.
In stark contrast, however, China has established the world's largest and full-fledged new energy industrial chain, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
The country provides 70 percent of the world's photovoltaic components and 60 percent of wind power equipment, it said. China's photovoltaic component production has ranked first in the world for 16 consecutive years.
As of the end of June, the combined installed capacity of wind and photovoltaic power generation in China reached 1.18 million megawatts, exceeding that of coal-fired power.
It has become obvious in China that environmental protection has been integrated into economic development, De Boer said. "Previously, people talked about, 'Should we focus on the environment or the economy?' Now, that's not the case, with the environment and economy going hand in hand," he said.
Shift in development
Having been to China over 100 times, with his first visit in 1980, Martin Lees, former assistant secretary general at the United Nations, has been deeply engaged in China's environmental policy development.
Marveling at the country's transformation from a nation where the term "environmental industries" was unfamiliar in the 1990s to one that has now established world-leading renewable energy industries, the 82-year-old linked these significant changes to a big shift in the country's thinking about economic growth.
The country has understood that environmental protection and tackling climate change should be an integral part of its economic development strategy, he emphasized.
As one of the initiators of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, Lees stressed that "China has been one of the first countries to recognize that its economic performance to improve the well-being of the Chinese people depends on the preservation of a stable and sustainable natural environment."
The council was established in 1992 and is now chaired by Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang. Lees served three five-year terms as a member of the high-level think tank that reports to the Chinese government.
Lees said China has recognized very well that it is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and therefore that the country's interest in solving this profound systemic problem is not just an international question, but also very much a question that affects the success of the domestic economy, he explained.
Arkebe Oqubay, former senior minister and special adviser to the prime minister of Ethiopia, agrees.
China, during its early stages of opening-up and reform, which started in the late 1970s, prioritized economic revitalization and high growth. But this growth came at a significant environmental cost, he said.
China has since learned that sustainable economic growth requires a balance between economic, health and environmental considerations, he added.
"China has shown that environmental sustainability has to be a critical component of economic growth, and we Africans have an opportunity to learn from that without making major mistakes," he said.
Oqubay also pointed to China's successful implementation of an active industrial policy that promotes green development as another valuable lesson for African nations.
China's success in harnessing new technologies and industrial capacity to establish industries in alternative energy and electric vehicles demonstrates that addressing climate change and environmental sustainability can serve as both a guiding principle and a driver of economic growth, he underscored.
Global significance
Hu Kanping, a researcher at the Chinese Ecological Civilization Research and Promotion Association, described the shift Oqubay depicted in China's development as a process of learning from the outside world toward self-exploration in solving environmental issues.
As a result of that exploration, Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization has come into formation, which is a concept that embodies the synergy between environmental protection and economic development, he said.
Two tenets of the thought are "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" and "green development is a profound revolution in the concept of development".
In the evolution of China's environmental efforts, the country initially focused on resolving its internal environmental issues by studying and adapting successful foreign practices, Hu said. As time progressed, China shifted toward developing its distinctive solutions.
The environmental challenges China strives to address, once prevalent in Western countries, have gradually emerged in developing nations as they pursue economic advancement, and thus now share global concerns, he said.
"This underscores the global significance of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization," he stressed.
The thought "has had profound effects on China and the rest of the world," said Adhere Cavince, a Kenya-based international relations scholar, echoing Hu.
"China is now actively sharing its wisdom and knowledge with partner countries on how to muster progressive and productive ecological practices," and has been actively involved in efforts to spearhead responsible global ecological governance frameworks, Cavince said.
Lees emphasized that China has made enormous steps toward a sustainable path of progress and expressed high hopes for China to play a pivotal role in addressing the global environmental and climate crisis, particularly focusing on the challenges faced by developing nations.
"I think that the role of China on climate, ecology and environmental issues, which will determine the future, will be absolutely central to having any chance of solving the problems we must face together," he said.
For the debt-plagued countries in the Global South that do not even have the financial capability to maintain their education and health systems and to reduce poverty, mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change is "an additional demand which is very difficult to deal with", he said.
China can play a critical role through the Belt and Road Initiative and other channels in addressing the international debt question, which is central to assisting developing nations to tackle climate and ecological issues effectively, he said.
Lees underlined that China has accumulated enormous practical experience and built up a resource of very expert people who understand these environmental, economic and climate issues, adding that China could help developing countries to build their capability to understand and manage these problems, which are critical to sustainable development, economic stability and world peace.
"It's no good saying to developing countries you ought to do this, and you ought to do that, if they don't have the people, the resources and the institutions they need to handle these problems.
"China can use its expertise and its economic and financial strength to help developing countries to build their capabilities to manage these critical issues," he said, adding that this would be a most effective and urgently needed stimulus to contain the intensifying global climate crisis.
Lees was endorsed by Muhammad Zamir Assadi, a Pakistani political analyst and an editor with Internews Pakistan, which is based in Islamabad.
"It has become obvious that China's green development path is the road of sustainable development with harmonious coexistence and benign interaction between human society and nature that has also become an example for the international community to follow as per the local needs in various countries," he said.
Contact the writer at houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn
