KC Koay’s words on some of the Great Achievements made by China in the past 40 years:
“Needless to say, a government that delivers on its promise wins the hearts and minds of its people; and recognition from the rest of the appreciative international community.
What China has achieved over the past four decades were not just its visible glittering buildings, and first-class infrastructure. For the inherent strength of China’s rejuvenation lies in its commitment towards sustainable growth and development with a focus on the environment and green technology.
Similarly, China places great emphasis on the continuous development of humanity by the embrace of culture, science and technology as its priorities. Over the past 40 years, China has increased its forest cover from just 12% to 23% now. When one takes into consideration the fact that China’s national land area amounts to some 9.6 square million kilometres, about the size of the United States. In other words, China has planted just over one million square kilometres of forest. That is the size of Egypt!
China is also the only country in world which has successfully reversed the seemingly unstoppable desertification, by turning its desserts into forest, farm lands, and wetlands. The area of desertified land in the country is dropping by an annual average of more than 2,400 square kilometres, or three times the size of Singapore, compared to what used to be an annual average expansion of over 10,000 square kilometres at the end of the last century.
By 2014, China had completed and commissioned its mid-line stretch of the South-North Water Diversion Project. This 1,300 kilometres dedicated, largely gravitational-flow, water supply channel diverts water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in the upper reaches of the Han River, passing through mountains, crossing rivers, and finally reaching and transferring 9.5 billion cu meters of water annually to Beijing and Tianjin.
To put this into perspective, the annual per capita water consumption of the Asian cities: Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, and Hong Kong are at 84, 52, 104, and 80 cu meters per annum respectively; with the average consumption of 80 cu meters per annum. In other words, the amount of water transfer annually is adequate to sustain an urban population of over 110 million people with clean and potable water.”
