By Carlos Martinez
AUGUST 15 marked China's first National Ecology Day. Eighteen years ago, Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), first put forward the concept that green mountains are themselves gold mountains when he visited Yucun, a village in Zhejiang province.

At a national conference on ecological and environmental protection in July 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China should support high-quality development with a high-quality ecological environment and promote the modernization featuring the harmonious co-existence between human and nature.