Chi­na's econ­o­my is the sec­ond largest in the world af­ter that of the Unit­ed States. Dur­ing the past 30 years, Chi­na's econ­o­my has changed from a cen­tral­ly-planned sys­tem that was large­ly closed to in­ter­na­tion­al trade to a more mar­ket-ori­ent­ed econ­o­my that has a rapid­ly grow­ing pri­vate sec­tor.Some of the se­ri­ous neg­a­tive con­se­quences of Chi­na's rapid in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment has been in­creased pol­lu­tion, smog, and degra­da­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources.Ef­forts to con­trol Chi­na's pol­lu­tion prob­lem have be­come a top pri­or­i­ty of the Chi­nese lead­er­ship. Be­gin­ning in 2006, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment strength­ened its en­vi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion and made some progress in stem­ming en­vi­ron­men­tal de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.

In the sec­ond of this two-part se­ries in Guardian Me­dia's on­go­ing Clean­ing Up The Mess space, YANG YOUM­ING, Am­bas­sador of the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, tells us how en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion is now en­trenched in state pol­i­cy.In the Sanya De­c­la­ra­tion of the third BRICS Lead­ers Meet­ing which con­clud­ed just two weeks ago, Chi­na reaf­firmed its sup­port to the de­vel­op­ment and use of re­new­able en­er­gy re­sources, as well as to the co-op­er­a­tion and in­for­ma­tion ex­change in that field.In that de­c­la­ra­tion, Chi­na and oth­er BRICS coun­tries al­so recog­nised the im­por­tance of nu­clear en­er­gy.

Pol­lu­tion re­duc­tion is very much in the pic­ture. Chi­na is the largest coal pro­duc­ing and con­sum­ing na­tion in the world, where 60 per cent of en­er­gy con­sumed is coal. Bear­ing this in mind, Chi­na has since 2009 steadi­ly car­ried out clean coal strat­e­gy with more wide­ly-used tech­nol­o­gy of coal liquifac­tion. Chi­na now has de­vel­oped some of the world's most ad­vanced clean coal tech­nol­o­gy. Chi­na is al­so com­mit­ted to the fight against "white pol­lu­tion." Since June 1, 2008, Chi­na has banned the pro­duc­tion, re­tail­ing and free use of tra­di­tion­al ul­tra­thin (0.025 mm or less) plas­tic shop­ping bags, a step that even many de­vel­oped coun­tries are yet to take. The amount of plas­tic bag us­age that year slashed by near­ly 40 bil­lion or 66 per cent na­tion­wide com­pared to one year ago.

Ef­forts are made to fun­da­men­tal­ly re­store the eco­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment of the good old times. Chi­na set March 12 as the Na­tion­al Ar­bor Day in 1979, and passed in 1981, a leg­isla­tive res­o­lu­tion that re­quires Chi­nese cit­i­zens to vol­un­tar­i­ly plant trees with­in their best ca­pa­bil­i­ties in 1981. Since 1982, more than 20.5 bil­lion trees have been plant­ed by hun­dreds of mil­lions of vol­un­teers through­out the coun­try.

Chi­na has made an in­dis­pens­able con­tri­bu­tion against the cli­mate change around the globe by re­for­est­ing its land at an av­er­age speed of over 70 mil­lion mu (ap­prox­i­mate­ly 46,666 km2) an­nu­al­ly, top­ping any oth­er coun­try in the world. Chi­na al­so car­ries out a pol­i­cy of Restor­ing Cul­ti­vat­ed Land to Forestry. Chi­na has the largest pop­u­la­tion yet very lim­it­ed cul­ti­vat­ed land in the world. Even so, Chi­na is de­ter­mined to giv­ing up some of the cul­ti­vat­ed land for the sake of pro­tect­ing and im­prov­ing the eco­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the west­ern part of Chi­na.

Chi­na is still a de­vel­op­ing coun­try work­ing hard to sat­is­fy its peo­ple's ex­pec­ta­tion in terms of eco­nom­ic growth, yet re­mains firm­ly com­mit­ted to pur­sue com­pre­hen­sive, bal­anced and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment by build­ing a re­source-con­serv­ing and en­vi­ron­ment-friend­ly so­ci­ety.Stephen Singer, the head of en­er­gy pol­i­cy for the WWF en­vi­ron­men­tal group placed his high hopes on Chi­na. "We have sub­stan­tive hopes in Chi­na that Chi­na will take the lead...to make low-car­bon econ­o­my, the high en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy econ­o­my a re­al­i­ty in the com­ing years," he said not long ago.