Great piece Jiang Jiang! People in the West often focus on "China Speed" but not often enough on China's long view. With a history of thousands of years, China's scale is different than most countries. These days many people in US are crowing about the 250th anniversary but compared to China's history, it's the mere blink of an eye. While some in US focus on "drill, baby, drill", the article shows New China, the CPC and its cadres have the Earth's environment and its protection written into it genetic code. A decade ago China had some of the most polluted places on the planet, but no longer. From having lived and choked through Beijing's 2013 "Airpocalypse" when pollution was 20-25 times WHO limits to today being in the "good to moderate" rate, its places like Youyu that illustrate why this transformation occurred.
Thank you, Harvey! Having lived in Beijing myself for many years, I've also witnessed some of the environmental changes firsthand. I thought the Youyu story provided an interesting lens through which to look at the thinking behind those longer-term efforts.
Great post. I spent the past few weeks taking trains across Shandong, and between Beijing and Shanghai, and marveling at how green the countryside has become in recent years. There are so many trees! I looked it up: 66 billion trees have been planted since 1978 and there are plans to plant 34 billion more by the mid-21st century. I also recalled, as I whipped past the trees at 300 km an hour and sipped the Starbucks iced latte the train attendant had given me, that when I first took trains across China in the 1980s, the attendants served food in styrofoam containers and then gathered them all up in plastic bags and threw them out the window as the train chugged through the brown, often littered, countryside! Times have changed...
Thank you for sharing these firsthand observations. It's fascinating how personal experiences across different decades can bring long-term changes into perspective.
Really interesting and insightful - tying lots of things together to understand what's happening currently in China. Context is everything when trying to understand China better, and this is just the kind of deeper dive that is needed to develop that context.
Great piece Jiang Jiang! People in the West often focus on "China Speed" but not often enough on China's long view. With a history of thousands of years, China's scale is different than most countries. These days many people in US are crowing about the 250th anniversary but compared to China's history, it's the mere blink of an eye. While some in US focus on "drill, baby, drill", the article shows New China, the CPC and its cadres have the Earth's environment and its protection written into it genetic code. A decade ago China had some of the most polluted places on the planet, but no longer. From having lived and choked through Beijing's 2013 "Airpocalypse" when pollution was 20-25 times WHO limits to today being in the "good to moderate" rate, its places like Youyu that illustrate why this transformation occurred.
Thank you, Harvey! Having lived in Beijing myself for many years, I've also witnessed some of the environmental changes firsthand. I thought the Youyu story provided an interesting lens through which to look at the thinking behind those longer-term efforts.
Great post. I spent the past few weeks taking trains across Shandong, and between Beijing and Shanghai, and marveling at how green the countryside has become in recent years. There are so many trees! I looked it up: 66 billion trees have been planted since 1978 and there are plans to plant 34 billion more by the mid-21st century. I also recalled, as I whipped past the trees at 300 km an hour and sipped the Starbucks iced latte the train attendant had given me, that when I first took trains across China in the 1980s, the attendants served food in styrofoam containers and then gathered them all up in plastic bags and threw them out the window as the train chugged through the brown, often littered, countryside! Times have changed...
Thank you for sharing these firsthand observations. It's fascinating how personal experiences across different decades can bring long-term changes into perspective.
Really interesting and insightful - tying lots of things together to understand what's happening currently in China. Context is everything when trying to understand China better, and this is just the kind of deeper dive that is needed to develop that context.
Thank you for the kind words! Context is often what gets lost in discussions about China, so I'm glad you found this piece useful.