In this opinion piece for the Global Times, Carlos Martinez describes the extraordinary progress made by China over the past two decades, emerging as a world leader in renewable energy, electric vehicles, green public transport and biodiversity protection. That China rather than the advanced capitalist countries has made such progress is “a reflection of China’s socialist system, which is structured in such a way that political and economic priorities are determined not by capital’s drive for constant expansion but by the needs and aspirations of the people.”
The West on the other hand, more interested in protecting its global hegemony than preventing climate breakdown, is moving in the opposite direction. The US’s proxy war on Russia has led to a huge increase in US exports of fracked shale gas to Europe; a rise in coal consumption in Europe; and ramped up oil drilling in the North Sea. Meanwhile the US and Britain have both recently announced major new drilling projects. And rather than cooperating with China, these countries impose sanctions on its renewable energy industry.
However, the countries of the Global South are enthusiastically cooperating with China and benefitting from its experience, support and investment. “Environmentalists in the West should draw the appropriate lessons, resolutely reject anti-China hysteria, oppose decoupling, oppose the new cold war, and promote maximum global cooperation to save the planet.”
Tuesday, August 15, marks China’s first National Ecology Day. On August 15, 2005, 18 years ago, Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), first put forward the concept that green mountains are themselves gold mountains, when he visited Yucun, a village in Zhejiang Province.
At a national conference on ecological and environmental protection in July 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China should support high-quality development with a high-quality ecological environment and promote the modernization featuring the harmonious co-existence between human and nature.
Over the past decades, China has made extraordinary progress, emerging as a world leader in renewable energy, electric vehicles, green public transport and biodiversity protection.
A BBC News article of June 29 noted that, of the half a trillion US dollars spent worldwide on wind and solar last year, China accounted for 55 percent. China’s solar capacity is now greater than that of the rest of the world combined. Indeed, it can reasonably be considered as the first “renewable energy superpower.”
Around 99 percent of the world’s electric buses are in China, along with 70 percent of the world’s high-speed rail. China is carrying out the largest reforestation project in the world, with forest coverage having doubled from 12 percent in 1980 to 24 percent last year.
And China’s commitment to green development is only deepening. Environmental sustainability is a central theme at all levels of government, and the nation’s ambitious goals to achieve peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 are actively informing China’s economic strategy.
Continue reading China’s ecological civilization a profound contribution to humanity