(A Closer Look at China) Xiamen Sample of Decoding Beautiful China
China News Service, Beijing, February 23, Title: Decoding Xiamen Sample of Beautiful China
China News Service reporter Pang Wuji
The city is on the sea, the sea is in the city, the sky is blue, the sea is vast, and there are egrets dotted there. Today, Xiamen's "landscape and sea city" coexist in harmony, and "beauty" has become a city card.
But this business card is not easy to come by. Behind it is not only a 36-year transformation, but also the "password" of building a beautiful China.
Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, emphasized that the construction of Beautiful China will comprehensively promote the modernization of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. "The next five years will be an important period for the construction of Beautiful China."
He proposed: "The environment is people's livelihood, green mountains are beauty, and blue skies are happiness."
Xiamen is an important birthplace and first practice place for Xi Jinping’s ecological civilization thought.
The Xiamen sample is an important part of the Beautiful China Atlas and has unique significance in decoding the path to building a Beautiful China.
In the practice of Xiamen that created the "Ludao Butterfly Transformation", three sets of keywords are inseparable.
From development to conservation
The story stems from the clarification of a pair of incomprehensible relationships: Which is more important, economic development or nature protection?
Behind it is the eternal theme of the development of human society - the game of the relationship between man and nature.
More than 30 years ago, Xi Jinping gave a clear answer while working in Xiamen.
"Can local destruction be used to carry out other aspects of construction? I think it is very clear that Xiamen cannot exchange for other aspects of development at this price."
A clear direction is the prerequisite for all changes to occur.
In March 1988, Xi Jinping, then member of the Standing Committee of the Xiamen Municipal Party Committee and Executive Vice Mayor, chaired a special meeting on "Comprehensive Management of Yuandang Lake" and proposed "managing the lake according to law, intercepting and treating sewage, dredging and building banks, revitalizing water bodies, and beautifying the environment." The 20-word policy opened the road to rebirth for Yuandang Lake.
Data map: Aerial photography of Yuandang Lake in downtown Xiamen and the park built around the lake.
Photo by Wang Dongming
After years of treatment, Yuandang Lake, which used to have sewage flowing across the river and litter everywhere, has been transformed into a "green lung of the city" with soaring egrets; "Yundang Fishing Fire", one of the eight old sights in Xiamen that disappeared during urban changes, has been reborn as "Yundang Night Color" The new appearance returns.
From development priority to protection priority, Xiamen is not the only one to benefit.
In the north, the Xilinhot grassland, which was once severely desertified and eroded by wind, "green advances and the sand recedes", and scenes from pastoral poetry have returned to people's vision; the "demon" Mu Us Desert, which once swallowed up human living space, is about to "disappear" from the territory of Shaanxi.
In Jiangnan, mine restoration has restored greenness to exposed rocks and devastated mines in Huibu Town, Changshan County, Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province.
In East China, Sha County and Jiangle County in Sanming City, Fujian Province are exploring systems such as "carbon coupons" and "forest coupons". Residents who have made money by cutting down trees for generations can now make money even without cutting down trees.
From "economic development cannot be at the expense of the environment" to "lucid waters and lush mountains are valuable assets" to "man and nature are a community of life", the relationship between man and nature is getting closer and closer, and development and protection are no longer opposed to each other.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that Chinese-style modernization is a modernization in which man and nature coexist harmoniously.
From mountain top to ocean
In July last year, Xi Jinping emphasized at the National Ecological Environmental Protection Conference that “we must persist in the integrated protection and systematic management of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grass and sand, and build a large-scale protection and management pattern from the top of the mountain to the ocean.”
From the Mountaintop to the Ocean emphasizes a systematic and holistic view in the construction of ecological civilization, which is also a major feature that distinguishes China's ecological civilization construction from many other countries.
In practice in Xiamen, one of the core approaches is to carry out comprehensive management of the bay area.
Bay regulation is a systematic project.
Xiamen City has carried out work such as dismantling the seawall in the inner bay, returning reclaimed land to the sea, clearing out aquaculture, and renovating and repairing the coastline. It has set up tidal inlets to increase the amount of tides in the bay, improve the exchange power of the bay water body, and improve the water quality of the sea area.
Through comprehensive management, seawater can be "alive", said Pan Shijian, former vice chairman of the Xiamen Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference. This approach is rare in cities around the world.
Xiamen also coordinates projects such as shoreline ecology, mangrove restoration, biodiversity protection and bay area improvement, returning farmland to the sea, and opening dikes to accommodate the sea, to improve the relevance and coupling of protection and restoration measures.
Xiamen’s practice is a microcosm of China’s systematic and holistic promotion of ecological civilization construction in recent years.
In recent years, China has promoted the integrated protection and systematic management of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grass and sand, and has successively implemented projects such as desert control, water purification, grass protection, and afforestation. It has also scientifically carried out large-scale land greening operations. In the past ten years, China has contributed about four billion to the world. One-third of the new green area.
From China to the world
Different positioning of the relationship between man and nature marks a new orientation coordinate for China and the world.
In the process of industrialization and modernization, most Western countries have followed a path of high resource consumption and pollution first and then treatment.
This excessive demand from nature has led to the advancement of "Earth Overshoot Day" every year.
The modernization of the harmonious coexistence of man and nature advocated by China provides another option for the modernization of other countries in the world. China's experience in ecological environment protection and restoration has also contributed Chinese wisdom to the world.
Today's Yuandang Lake has become a successful example of integrated coastal zone management based on ecosystems at home and abroad.
Since 2007, Yuandang Lake management work has been included in the "Integrated Coastal Zone Management" training course of the Chinese government's foreign aid project, and training and experience promotion have been carried out to more than 100 developing countries and nearly 2,000 officials and technical personnel around the world.
Today, Xiamen has become a “leader” in promoting high-quality development through high-level ecological restoration in global bay-shaped cities.
In November 2023, Peter Thomson, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Ocean Affairs, inspected the Xiatanwei mangrove forest and highly affirmed the balance achieved between Xiamen's ecology and economy, and looked forward to it providing a "Xiamen sample" for international marine ecological and environmental governance.
Today, China has become a pioneer in significantly improving the ecological environment and leading the world in the development of technology and new energy.
Green is becoming a more eye-catching background for China's high-quality development. Green waters and green mountains are the most beautiful picture of the construction of a beautiful China.
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