With increasing expectations on improved environmental quality, the issue of environmental protection has again been a focal point of the second session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) that is currently held in Beijing. 

During his recent attendance of the panel discussion consisting of NPC deputies from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for stressed efforts to build an ecological civilization and preserve the natural beauty in northern border areas of China and warned against the tendency of sacrificing the environment for economic growth. 

Besides, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivered the government work report and highlighted pollution control, ecological construction and green development as one of the key tasks in 2019.

It has become afact that the "China miracle" of economic development in the past decades comes along with environmental, social and political costs. Thanks to the resolution and determination to combat against pollution and promote ecological conservation at the central level, especially under the auspices of leadership charisma, environmental protection has scaled unprecedented heights in China. 

The stance of China as a committed player in offering a sustainable future is in stark contrast with the grim situation of global efforts to tackle environmental challenges influenced by the presidency of Donald Trump in the United States. 

A wide range of momentous reforms and measures have been deployed and promoted in the environmental regime during the past several years, which shows that China is fulfilling its green promise instead of treating it in a rhetorical sense. 

To name a few, the vertical management reform of environmental monitoring, inspection and law enforcement and waves of environmental supervision campaigns were launched in 2016 with stunning progress realized. The introduction of the national park system has blazed a trail for conserving natural beauty and most biodiverse areas since 2017. 

China's new investment in renewable energy in 2017 accounted for 45 percent of the global contribution, and China secures 43 percent of the world's clean energy jobs. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment is formally established as part of the reshuffle plan in early 2018 with a particular emphasis on its function of ecological conservation. 

Procuratorial organs were formally authorized to bring environmental public interest litigation in 2017 legal amendments, and the new Environmental Protection Tax Law took effect in January 2018. The system of ecological and environmental damage compensation is upscaled nationwide in 2018 after the launching of pilot programs in 2015.

Nevertheless, given that China's historically-formulated environmental debt is not easy to be resolved and the ecological environment remains fragile and vulnerable, institutional and systematic barriers for advancing ecological civilization remain. The event of ecological disruption in Qilian Mountain due to over-exploitation and illegal construction indicates an implementation gap of central regulations and policies and pitfalls of environmental governance at local levels. 

The fact that the demolition of illegally constructed lavish villas in ecologically significant Qinling area took almost four years from 2014 to 2018 and was accomplished only after an ad hoc "central envoy" dispatched and stationed locally shows that the situation of anti-corruption is still frustrating and in compliance with the law is still prevalent. 

There is still a long way to go in shifting local officials' outdated mind-setting of prioritizing economic growth, curbing their arbitrary and capricious exercise of power and reducing formalism and bureaucratism in environmental policy-making and its implementation.

China has now reached a critical period when it comes to protecting the ecological environment considering that ecological conservation receives equal and balanced attention with pollution control in the country's environmental agenda until just recently. 

Facing a more pluralized and polarized society, rigid targets of continuous economic growth and demands of maintenance of social stability, it is conceivable that the path toward a full-fledged system of an ecological civilization will still be formidable. Nevertheless, the efforts of the current generation will ultimately affect the future well-being, not only of the Chinese people but mankind as a whole.

(Cover photo: Liu Bingjiang, head of Atmospheric Environment at China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment, attends a news conference on the sidelines of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, China, March 5, 2019. /VCG Photo)