China now leads in global environmental governance, minister says

China has shifted from being a participant to a leader in global ecological and environmental governance as ecological civilization has become a cornerstone of the country's sustainable development strategy, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on Thursday.

Speaking at a symposium in Beijing on accelerating the comprehensive green transition of economic and social development and building a Beautiful China, Huang said the country has made significant progress in environmental protection since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

"Experts from foreign think tanks told me that they used to bring in experiences in ecological and environmental protection from other countries to China in the past, now they are learning from Chinese experience," Huang said.

To improve air quality, China has promoted clean heating in rural areas across northern China based on local conditions, raising the clean heating rate to 83 percent.

The country has also basically completed the ultra-low-emission retrofit of coal-fired power plants, while 990 million metric tons of crude steel production capacity has undergone ultra-low-emission upgrades, helping establish what Huang described as the world's largest clean power system and clean steel production system.

In 2025, the average PM2.5 concentration — invasive particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less — in cities at the prefecture-level and above fell to 28 micrograms per cubic meter, down 59 percent from 2013.

"China has become the fastest in the world in terms of air quality improvement," Huang said.

To improve water quality, authorities have treated more than 491,000 river discharge outlets and 66,000 sea discharge outlets. More than 3,000 black and odorous water bodies in cities at the prefecture-level and above have been basically eliminated, while the elimination rate in county-level cities has also exceeded 90 percent.

"We can often see people have a good time by the rivers and lakes after they have been cleaned up. People in China used to envy the environment in other countries, but we are now not in the slightest inferior," he said.

By the end of 2025, China's forest coverage had surpassed 25 percent, Huang said.

Since the beginning of this century, about one-quarter of the world's newly added green areas have come from China, making it the country with the largest and fastest growth in forest resources and the largest area of artificial afforestation, he added.

Huang said China's ecological and environmental protection efforts have shifted from focusing on quantity to quality, from passive response to proactive action, and from practical exploration to scientifically guided action.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), China will implement a dual-control system for total carbon emissions and carbon intensity, while promoting energy-saving and carbon-reduction measures as it works toward peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.

"Our commitment to the goals is unwavering, but the path and methods to achieve the targets, as well as the pace and intensity, should and must be determined by us alone, without external influence," Huang said.