China should speed up "reform of the system of developing an ecological civilization, and building a beautiful China", General Secretary Xi Jinping said in his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Promoting green development is one of China's five key development concepts, and "beautiful" has become part of the goal of a "modern socialist China". This means ecological civilization has risen higher in the Party's agenda for China's development.

Thanks to almost four decades of reform, China has transformed from a planned to a market-based economy with an unprecedented economic growth rate, which helped it meet all the Millennium Development Goals by 2016. From 2003 to 2016, China's GDP increased from less than 15 trillion yuan to more than 74 trillion yuan ($11.2 trillion), and its per capita GDP from more than 10,000 yuan to over 52,000 yuan.

But this phenomenal economic growth has come at a very high environmental cost. According to the World Health Organization, China faces severe air pollution, which is a health hazard for its people. Water pollution, too, is pervasive. In 2014, 15.7 percent of the country's groundwater was classified as "very poor" and another 44 percent relatively poor.