Why China's guidelines on green transition are necessary

Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council unveiled on Sunday a set of groundbreaking guidelines to accelerate green transition in all areas of economic and social development – the country's first systematic deployment of its green and low-carbon goals, according to Xinhua reports.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has secured historic achievements in eco-environmental protection and green growth. The country's carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP dropped by over 35 percent compared to that of 2012, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Its renewable energy capacity surpassed thermal generation for the first time in December last year, occupying more than half of its installed power generation capacity.

But in the meantime, China's green transition faces challenges. For instance, the country's energy structure still remains biased toward coal, the proportion of fossil energy and traditional industries remains high, and the basis for better ecological and environmental quality is not solid enough.

In this context, the new state-level guidelines that have raised quantitative work goals and a raft of work tasks are necessary and essential to achieve China's carbon emission targets, promote green transition of the development model and realize the country's high-quality growth, said Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.

"The guidelines have not only updated and expanded China's previous policy system of green and low-carbon development, but also made comprehensive and systematic deployments of the new challenges China is facing in its pursuit of green growth," Yu Xiang, the director of the Climate Change Economics Research Office at the Research Institute for Eco-civilization, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told CGTN, adding that the documents will further promote the comprehensive green transition in all economic and social sectors.

Yu believed that compared with the central government's previous instructions, the newly released guidelines feature comprehensiveness and systematic approaches, covering territorial space, industrial structure, the energy sector, transportation and urban-rural development.

For instance, the guidelines aim to boost green consumption by expanding the scope and scale of government procurement of green products, promoting trade-in programs to boost consumer spending on green products, and carrying out marketing campaigns for new energy vehicles and green home appliances in rural regions.

The key parts of macroeconomics – production, consumption, investment, and trade – have all been highlighted in the guidelines, Hu Tao, the president of the Lakestone Institute for Sustainable Development and chairman of the Board of the Professional Association for China's Environment, said in an interview with CGTN.

Apart from comprehensiveness, the guidelines attach great importance to collaboration. The development of different regions and different industries has been taken into account in the guidelines. Specific measures including establishing the collection, utilization and treatment system of agricultural wastes have been written into the documents to promote green growth in rural regions.

Collaboration between traditional and emerging industries is another highlight of the guidelines, according to Hu. By promoting the growth of green and low-carbon industries and business models, the guidelines project that the scale of the energy-saving and environmental protection industry will reach about 15 trillion yuan ($2 trillion).

The guidelines – pledging to achieve "remarkable results" in green transition in all areas of economic and social development by 2030 and basically establish a green, low-carbon and circular development economic system and basically achieve the goal of Beautiful China by 2035 – will further cement China's leading role in global green growth.

While China has been actively participating in environmental protection over the past decades, the country is playing lead in the global green governance system, Hu said. On the one hand, China is actively sharing its experiences in anti-pollution and renewable energy growth with other countries. On the other, with its contributions to green development increasingly recognized by the international community, China is playing an increasingly significant role in the rule-writing of global green development.

Climate change is a global challenge. The newly-released guidelines reflect China's will to balance economic development with ecological sustainability and its unwavering commitment to global environmental initiatives.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions on Twitter to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)