The efforts Xiamen has made in ecological protection over the last 20 years have helped it become a beautiful and clean city.
Twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to the city of Xiamen in southeastern China’s Fujian Province. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was in a rush, I did not have the chance to see the whole city. My memory of Xiamen was its pleasant climate and unforgettable beauty – I knew if I ever got the opportunity, I would revisit this place. Twenty years went by until I was able to return to this city again. After emerging from the airport, I realized that I had grown older, while Xiamen was becoming increasingly youthful and vibrant. What exactly had given this city such vitality?
President Xi Jinping personally drew up a blueprint for Xiamen’s transformation from island-based development to bay-based development when he was deputy mayor of Xiamen and then governor of Fujian. Xiamen has successively carried out comprehensive management of its bay areas and implemented ecological restoration. It has created a beautiful bay area around it and the urban built-up area has expanded from 94 square kilometers in 2002 to 405 square kilometers in 2021. Xiamen's cross-island development strategy has expanded the city's spatial framework as well as shortened the distance between Xiamen Island and Xiamen’s mainland, making the "half-hour living circle" a reality.
One of the important experiences of Xiamen that can serve as a lesson is learning how it has kept its sky above the towering new buildings blue and free from haze and protected its waters from pollution.
A flock of black swan swim around Wuyuan Bay Wetland Park in Xiamen, Fujian Province, a place they call home, on November 26, 2024.
Restoration of Yundang Lake
Yundang Lake, an inner bay where the ocean flows into Xiamen Island, is an important model for Xiamen's early exploration of an ecological civilization. In the 1970s and 1980s, embankments were built to enclose the lake, and it became a depository for garbage from the surrounding areas, causing serious pollution and affecting the lives of residents. Xi personally oversaw the restoration of the lake, giving instructions for intercepting sewage, clearing the silt and building banks, revitalizing water bodies, and beautifying the environment.
For more than 30 years, Xiamen has taken the comprehensive management of Yundang Lake as its starting point, adhered to source control, kept moving the checkpoints forward in the process of marine ecological protection, and promoted river basin management, urban and rural sewage treatment, and sea discharge outlets overseeing. It has also expanded urban sewage treatment capacity and established a sound "marine sanitation" mechanism for marine floating garbage management, controlled and reduced land-based pollutants at the source, and built a solid marine ecological protection barrier. It has established the first marine comprehensive law enforcement team in the country, and established a mechanism for joint law enforcement at sea.
Since the Xiamen Municipal People's Government building and Xiamen People's Hall are located to the north of the lake, Bailuzhou Park, the main body of the lake island, is often the venue for various mass cultural activities hosted by Xiamen (such as the Xiamen Lantern Festival), and Yundang Lake has become a political and cultural center.
According to Zhong Pengze, an engineer at the Yundang Lake Protection Center, the lake has another identity as the most important flood control and drainage water area in the core urban area of the city. Yundang Lake bears the rain waters and water of 30 percent of the land area of Xiamen Island. Whenever a rainstorm hits, Yundang Lake will switch from the "park landscape water body" mode to the "flood prevention and disaster reduction" mode, temporarily sacrificing its "appearance" and "health" in exchange for the flood prevention safety of Xiamen's main urban area.
Zhong told China Today that 20 years ago, with the serious sewage problems Yundang Lake was facing, there were few residents or office buildings around it. But after its ecological environment was restored, striking changes have been seen in the surrounding economy, resulting in more businesses moving in. The value of the properties around the lake have also escalated. Today, people like to stroll in Bailuzhou Park and around Yundang Lake, enjoying looking at the clear water rippling in the gentle breeze and the surrounding greenery.
During the 2017 BRICS Leaders' Meeting in Xiamen, President Xi chose to hold a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Yundang Academy that is part of the Yundang Lake complex. Xi praised Xiamen as "a beautiful ecological garden city where people and nature coexist harmoniously."
Treating Urban Sewage
The Xiamen Municipal Gaoqi Water Purification Plant is an example of how the Xiamen government turns the roofs of sewage treatment plants into beautiful parks.
The plant was built in 2020 by the Fujian Xiamen Municipal Water Environment Co., which also operates it. The advanced treatment process handles 200,000 cubic meters of urban waste a day and works 24/7. The company currently has 16 sewage treatment plants in Xiamen. Walking through the main plant near the Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport is a pleasant surprise. The building is spacious and well-lit, there are semi-underground sewage treatment facilities, but there is no malodor in the air. The long-term plan is to reach a daily sewage treatment capacity of 500,000 cubic meters.
The roof of four treatment plants have been transformed into rooftop parks with great views of the city. According to the plant manager, Fang Shipan, the plants are watered with the reclaimed water that has been treated by the plant and meets the discharge standards. From the rooftop park of the main plant, visitors can see the Gaoqi International Airport on one side and the ocean on the other. Fang said the rooftop park, though temporarily closed because of renovations, will be opened to the public soon.
Looking out over the Wuyuan Bay in Xiamen, Fujian Province. Photos by Yu Xiangjun
Restoring the Seaside Ecology
Xiamen's achievements in ecological restoration and protection also include the restoration, cultivation, and protection of mangrove forests. Mangroves are coastal ecosystems that provide many services, including carbon sequestration and storage, carbon and alkalinity output, biodiversity maintenance, and coastal protection. Mangroves have been called "forests in the sea" and "green lungs of the ocean." The rapid degradation of the mangrove ecosystem, coupled with marine disasters such as typhoons, seriously affected the ecological environment of the Xiamen sea area and the economic development of the coast. Data show that between 2001 and 2010, red tides occurred at an average of 2.5 times a year in the Tong'an Bay.
The Xiatanwei Mangrove Park stands as one of China's exemplary cases of synergy between coastal ecological restoration and disaster mitigation. It is located in the core area of Tongan Bay, Xiang'an District, Xiamen City, with a total planning area of 4.04 million square meters. After completion, about 850,000 square meters of mangroves will be planted with leisure boardwalks and four boat piers. When completed, it will become the largest mangrove ecological park in Fujian. While improving the marine ecological environment and strengthening environmental protection, it has also yielded significant social and economic benefits.
More than a decade ago, Xiatanwei was a dumping ground littered with waste. Due to reclamation and disorderly aquaculture activities, the bay area was a chaotic mess with severe seawater pollution, which led to serious damage of local mangrove forests.
Then in 2005, the Xiamen government began carrying out mangrove ecological restoration. To make a change, Xiamen implemented a series of projects to restore its mangrove forests and invited a research team led by Lin Peng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Xiamen University, known as the “father of Chinese mangroves.” They cultivated and planted 6.67 hectares of experimental forests.
Since 2010, the mangrove area in Xiatanwei has reached 85 hectares, forming a “green buffer zone” that serves as a natural ecological barrier against natural disasters such as typhoons and storm surges. Statistics show that a significant increase in the number of bird and animal species has also been observed in Xiatanwei, with avian diversity now reaching 60 to 70 species.
Walking along the boardwalks and bridges in the park, visitors can see white cranes meandering along mangroves and various other sea creatures like mudskippers and crabs crawling in and out of the mud when the tide is out.
It takes a long time to achieve a beautiful transformation. Today, the Xiatanwei Mangrove Park has been built into an urban base that integrates environmental protection, scientific research, science education promotion, and recreation, adding a new name card for Xiamen's high-value, high-quality, international and modern garden city.
While protecting the ecological environment, Xiamen has improved the happiness and well-being of its people and increased its charm to attract tourists. In 2023, the average annual salary of employees in non-private units in Xiamen's urban areas was RMB 123,081, an increase of 1.2 percent over the previous year. Behind the figure is improvement of the quality of life and the enhancement of happiness of the people. Every friend who visits Xiamen will be reluctant to leave.
Xiamen has changed in all aspects over the past 20 years. From rapid economic development to urban expansion, from environmental improvement to the progress of social undertakings, it is becoming a shining pearl on the southeast coast of China with its unique charm and vitality. I look forward to my next trip to Xiamen to appreciate its beautiful and diverse ecological civilization once again. I just hope I don’t have to wait another 20 years.
