You can subscribe to The Spectator for 12 weeks for only 12 pounds for our print and online editions,

plus get six months of digital access free to the Telegraph. Go to spectator.co.uk

forward slash telegraph. Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu.

Every episode, I'll be talking to journalists, experts, and longtime China watchers

about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.

There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How did the Chinese see these issues?

Now, growing up the river near my house in Nanjing, the Qinghua was very smelly.

There were the rainbow reflections of chemical effluent floating on the surface almost every single day.

Only out-of-town tourists would take up the offer of these tourist boat trips onto the river

and probably only once and never again.

These days when I go back to Nanjing, the river has cleared up.

But the sky is grey and smoggy, the sort of smog that I used to associate with Beijing,

and that's been something that's new in the last few years compared to when I was younger.

That perhaps illustrates the paradox of modern China's relationship with the environment.

It seems to be one step forward in some senses and in a step back in others.

So I want to talk about that a little bit today. China has

long been seen as a leading polluter. Indeed, it pollutes the most out of all countries in the

world. It's the largest consumer and producer of coal. It is the largest oil importer as well.

And it's growing fast coal consumption increased fivefold from 1990 to 2018. At the same time,

it accounts for a quarter of the world's renewable energy investments, and is also a leading

supplier and consumer of solar panels. So how do we reconcile a seeming contradiction and how

green is China really?

...