CAMPAIGN FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENT

The last 10 years have also witnessed China's unprecedented moves on improving the environment, from controlling air, water and soil pollution to conserving existing green ecosystems as well as adding new forests, grasslands and wetlands.

"We should protect the environment like we protect our eyes, and treat the environment like we treat our lives," Xi said when joining a deliberation with lawmakers from east China's Jiangxi Province at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress in 2015.

Last year, the share of days with good air quality rose to 87.5 percent, up 0.5 percentage points from 2020. The progress was built on marked improvements during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), which increased by 5.8 percentage points to 87 percent.

Good air days came along with the fast growth of green areas. Earlier data from NASA satellites showed that China alone accounts for 25 percent of the global net increase in leaf area during 2000-2017.

Joining Beijing citizens to plant trees in April last year, Xi urged greater efforts to increase the country's forest areas, enhance the quality of forests and boost the carbon sink capacity of ecosystems. Since 2013, Xi has joined Beijing citizens in tree-planting activities for nine consecutive years.

Data from the white paper on responding to climate change showed that from 2016 to 2020, China had planted around 36.3 million hectares of forests and added 202,600 hectares of new wetlands.

Aiming for a greener and more sustainable future, China has revved up its policy support to achieve the goals of carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060, which Xi put forward in 2020 at the General Debate of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Within less than two years, a set of policy arrangements have been unveiled in this respect, involving both top-level designs and institutional innovations.

In late October last year, central authorities issued a guiding document on achieving the carbon goals, laying out key specific targets and measures for the coming decades. By 2030, China's carbon emissions will peak, stabilize and then decline, and by 2060, China will be carbon neutral and have fully established a green, low-carbon and circular economy, it says.

Going forward, challenges will remain. But in Xi's opinion, there is no turning back.

"Meeting these [carbon peaking and neutrality] targets will require tremendous hard work from China. Yet we believe that when the interests of the entire humanity are at stake, China must step forward, take action, and get the job done", Xi said when addressing the World Economic Forum Virtual Event of the Davos Agenda in 2021.