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Editor's Note

In last month’s issue, regular readers of Business Beijing were treated to exciting new plans for the development of the districts, towns and villages in southern Beijing, roughly south of Chang’anJie.

This month we follow with an English-exclusive account of the municipality’s dramatic new Green Action Plan, revealed to us on December 24, 2009, and the municipality’s plan to reduce carbon emissions municipalitywide over the coming three years.

In its pursuit of a low-carbon and green lifestyle for businesses and residents in Beijing, hardly any business or household will be excluded from the processes involved in reducing carbon and other polluting emissions, saving water and using it more efficiently, using more efficient air conditioners, heaters, boilers, light bulbs, electrical engines in manufacturing and using electrical vehicles, both private and public on the municipality’s roadways. Public transportation modes will be expanded even more and faster. The Beijing CBD will be roughly doubled in size, but will also become one of the “cleanest” low-carbon CBDs in the world.

Bare mountainsides will be planted with trees; more green spaces and forests will be added in the central urban area and in rural areas; watersheds that feed water to Beijing’s large reservoirs will get added protection and industrial activities in watersheds will be curtailed. Tourism activities will replace industrial extraction and mining in rural areas as sources of income, creating safer and more diverse forms of employment and industrial activity.

The Zhongguancun scientific community will focus on creating and refining new-energy sources, whether garbage incineration, wind-power and solar-power electricity generation or providing consumers more efficient products to use in their homes and lives.

As you will see beginning on page 12 of this issue, the municipality has not only announced the plan, it has also announced a guidance and enforcement mechanism clearly stating what leaders from top to bottom must do to begin implementing the plan.

Like a drop of oil falling on still waters, this plan will gradually come to involve nearly every resident and business in the capital; it is a story worth reading and thinking about.

With the success of the plan—in just three years—Beijing residents will be able to enjoy cleaner air and water, more and greener public spaces, shady parks, delightful mountain scenery and a better business and residential lifestyle.

Beijing is striving for excellence in yet another important category: making the country’s capital one of the most comfortable and enjoyable international cities one can imagine in which to live, work and invest in the future.

Come along: won’t you?