Jiangsu shuts down 7,000 heavily polluting chemical enterprises

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Letting fresh air, clean water, and a tidy environment become a reality more often – Yesterday, the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee held a press conference focused on environmental beauty. Leaders from the provincial environmental protection department, housing and urban-rural development department, and agriculture committee briefed the 79 million residents of Jiangsu on the achievements made by these departments in promoting environmental beauty during the 12th Five-Year Plan period. They also outlined a new blueprint for green development in Jiangsu over the next five years. 7,000 highly polluting enterprises have been shut down. Jiangsu was the first in the country to establish ecological red lines, met ahead of schedule the targets set for phasing out outdated production capacity, stepped up efforts in environmental remediation, and enhanced environmental supervision and enforcement... At a press conference yesterday, Jiang Wei, deputy director of the provincial environmental protection department, explained that in recent years Jiangsu has made significant progress in its green economic transformation. Currently, 22.2% of the province’s land area is under strict protection through these red line zones. Over the past five years, more than 7,000 heavily polluting chemical enterprises have been closed down. Just this year alone, the province has filed investigations into 6,294 illegal cases, and 185 cases of environmental crimes have been taken up for investigation. While stepping up efforts in environmental remediation and enforcement, Jiangsu has also enhanced reforms in the environmental protection system as well as approaches to social collaboration and shared responsibility. Examples of these efforts include introducing environmental impact assessments for regional development strategies, raising significantly the standards for collecting pollution fees, piloting a \"two-way compensation\" system for water environment resources upstream and downstream, and expanding the scope of pilot programs related to the paid use and trading of pollution discharge rights. Through these series of measures, by the end of November this year, the average PM2.5 concentration across the province had decreased by 16.5% on a year-on-year basis, while the number of days with severe air pollution had dropped by 38.4% compared to the previous year. The province plans to build 10,000 beautiful and livable villages. \"A pleasant environment\" entails not only clean air, clear water, and a tidy surroundings, but also ensuring that people can \"see the mountains, see the water, and remember their hometown\", allowing the beauty of nature to complement that of culture, as well as traditional beauty to go hand in hand with modern beauty. ”As the leader of Jiangsu’s housing and construction sector, Zhou Lan, the director of the Provincial Housing and Construction Department, explained her understanding of environmental beauty at the press conference, taking into account the division of responsibilities. Zhou Lan explained that housing and urban-rural development work encompasses areas closely related to environmental beauty, such as urban and rural planning, the protection of historic and cultural cities, towns, and villages, landscape gardening, the construction of urban infrastructure, and the improvement of living conditions in urban and rural areas. To date, 180,000 natural villages across the province have completed their renovation tasks, with a coverage rate of over 95%. In urban environmental improvement, the approach of \"providing essential assistance rather than adding unnecessary enhancements\" is adopted, with efforts focused on addressing issues in areas and aspects of the urban environment that are weak. A total of 51,800 urban environmental improvement projects have been carried out. The province has 12 **historically and culturally significant cities** and 26 **historically and culturally significant towns**. Four cities have received the \"United Nations Habitat Award\", 9 projects have won the \"UN-Habitat International Prize for Best Practices in Housing Improvement\", 11 cities have received the \"China Habitat Environment Award\", and 47 projects have earned the \"China Habitat Environment Excellence Award\" – all of which place the province among the leaders in China in these categories. In the housing and urban-rural development plan for the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the existing shortcomings in the environment of cities and towns will continue to be addressed. It is reported that the province plans to develop around 10,000 beautiful and livable villages, as well as to preserve and protect around 1,000 provincial-level traditional villages and groups of traditional residential buildings. The province also aims to encourage small towns to work toward achieving the status of \"clean and tidy towns,\" with the goal of having around 100 dynamic key central towns and around 100 towns with distinct regional characteristics by 2020. Over a thousand villages have been transformed into star-rated, comfortable rural communities. Just as in the barrel theory the shortest plank determines how much water can be held, compared to cities that possess inherent advantages in terms of their environment, rural areas suffer from weaker infrastructure, which becomes a constraint on achieving an attractive environment. Therefore, once the rural areas achieve beautiful environments, the entire province will truly have beautiful environments as well. Wu Peiliang, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Agriculture Commission, told reporters that through five years of effort, over 95% of the natural villages in the province have completed the first round of renovation tasks. The poor and messy conditions in these villages have improved significantly, and more than 1,300 three-star rural communities featuring beautiful environments, ecological suitability, complete facilities, and distinct characteristics have been established. The environmental improvement efforts in villages in Jiangsu have been widely welcomed by farmers. These initiatives were awarded the **Human Settlements Environment Excellence Award** in 2014, and were recognized by the Asian Development Bank’s East Asia Sustainable Development Center as a \"Best Practice Example\" for that same year. In Wu Peiliang’s view, modern agriculture is not only a green industry but also an important element in creating a pleasant environment. The beauty of the rural environment should be based on principles such as reasonable functional layout, efficient use of resources, preservation of agricultural culture, and a healthy rural environment. Achieving the goals of Green Jiangsu, where green foods benefit the stomach, arable land resources improve the appearance, rural landscapes delight the eyes, and natural oxygen-rich areas benefit the lungs. Considering the good development momentum of leisure and tourism agriculture in our province over the past two years, Wu Peiliang believes that in addition to expanding its scale, it is also necessary to improve its quality. It is necessary to maintain the fundamentals of agriculture while also pursuing differentiated and distinctive development, highlighting the cultural heritage of farming, and fostering clustered development.