Unveiling China's environmental revolution & ecological civilization. Former UNEP official Erik Solheim told CGTN's Liu Xin that China has moved from the backseat to the driving seat of Green Development. China's shifting gears from economic development to high-quality growth and sustainability.

Erik Solheim: If you go back 20 years in China, everything was economic development. That was the one and only issue, bringing everyone out of extreme poverty, but now (China) focus on high-quality growth. This is set by the center. This comes from the center and from the President himself to set this direction for China. But I think largely, local authorities, city authorities, all the many provinces of China, they all understand this message, and they want to go green.

Many people have the old impression of China. They have seen on TV all the pollution, which was in Beijing and Tianjin 10 years ago, and they haven't really updated their knowledge. They don't understand how much this has changed. And they know that China is the biggest coal user in the world, which is true, but also China is by far the biggest in solar and wind and green hydrogen and whatever is the new green technology. So please open your eyes for the change in China. It's not that China cannot do more. Of course, it can and will. But at this stage, China has moved from being in the backseat of green development. At the time, China had mainly a lot to learn from, particularly Europe, now into China being in the driving seat.

China is now totally dominant in the producing of solar panels in the world. 82% of all solar panels in the world last year were made in China. Longi, I visited them in Xi'an. They are now the biggest solar company in the world. They're producing an enormous number of solar panels. Of course, after some time, these solar panels will have to be retired, then they should prepare for recycling them into new products so we don't waste all these resources.

And, of course, the electric car industry, they're using a lot of cobalt, lithium, copper, and then the batteries, after some time, are retired. We should reuse these into new products. All this can be done. We just need to plan for a recycling industry based on the present industries.