Environmental crisis calls for smarter, flexible responses

This year's worst air pollution in Beijing once again demonstrated the necessity for China to address its environmental challenges with immediate and unprecedented efforts.

For a vast developing country like China to succeed in the war against pollution, it requires not only firm and long-term government commitments to reduce all kinds of pollutants but also efforts to rally as much public support as possible.

Chinese cities such as Beijing, which have benefited a lot from the country's rapid urbanization and industrialization over the past decades, are therefore obliged to blaze a trail in mobilizing and making the most efficient use of their resources to cut pollution and minimize the environmental damage.