InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA – Since 2018, China has showed its strong commitment to get environmental and sustainable development. The initiative is globaly the same with the trend and considered that environmental protection would be the crucial aspect that needs institutional restructurisation and close regulation implementation.

President Xi Jinping told that it is important to protect the environment in the 2018 Protection Conference. He also acknowledged it needs institutional innovation to realize sustainable industries that cover some initiatives, such as, China’s Fourteenth Plan (2021-2025) that would focus on green trade, guidelines of green development for foreign investment, and double carbon target.

As InfoSAWIT quoted from Forest Digest, some government’s institutions, including Ministry of Trade and Ministry of Environment in China launched guidelines to encourage sustainability principles in foreign investment and cooperation. Besides, China targeted the 2060 carbon neutral, the peak carbon emission in 2030, and stopped coal power plant abroad.

Green Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) would be the way to minimize negative impacts from every economic activity to the environment by delivering facilitation of environmental integration and realize sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the countries that connect by trade hub to China.

But as same as the green initiative, the challenges, such as, greenwashing practices appeared. Advertisement industries become the focus with the increasing needs on close regulation. Though there is no special regulation to solve greenwashing, China did regulate the same action through advertisement regulation, consumers’ protection, brands, and anti-unhealthy competition.

In financial sector, greenwashing would be the serious notice. Though there is no guidelines in national scale, China Regulation Commission of Banks and Insurance proposed guidelines to develop environmental finance in 2021. This was about to confirm that financial institution would have the assessment system and close risk control.

The Government of China also used regulation approach through Administration Market Regulation to deal with fake advertisement and unhealthy competition. Though there are some cases of law enforcement that may misinterpret the concept of ‘environmental protection’, the Constitutional Court of China published special guidelines about carbon emission to deliver further direction.

Sustainable development in China was also reflected by having the mainstream of four main flows of development. They covered sustainable development, gender, social and cultural capital, and digitally transformation. These are about to confirm that the development would be equal and fair by noticing environmental conservation, and adaptation to climate changes.

These progresses showed that China is heading to be more sustainable, with the focus on environmental protection, close regulations, and innovations in many sectors. (T2)