Eye on Asia | China can become one of the world’s biggest green innovators
- Reforming trade plan could make Beijing a global environment champion
Seven years ago, in 2012, when China announced it wanted to build an ecological civilisation, it was hard to take it seriously.
The concept sounded good, but it was too much to hope for from the world’s biggest polluter. A year later, China launched the “Belt and Road Initiative” and, ever since, all eyes have turned in that direction.
As billions of dollars have started to pour into a plethora of eye-catching belt and road projects, many of which had nothing to do with the original purpose of restoring the old Silk Road, criticism has hit the project from all directions.
Growing increasingly sensitive, President Xi Jinping has made a recent timid attempt to define what kind of investments are welcomed under the belt and road umbrella. Has China identified an opportunity to give its belt and road a new identity? I believe it did.
As the environmental crisis is deepening, China’s 2012 “ecological civilisation” idea is ready to be brought back to the table, this time in the form of a green belt and road.