Chinese President Xi Jinping's inspection trip to northwest China's Shaanxi Province has reassured the world of the country's firm resolution in the pursuit of green development even as the country deals with an unprecedented economic downward pressure.

Xi's Monday tour to the Qinling Mountains, a natural boundary between the country's north and south, came as a reminder of his persistent instructions between 2014 and 2018 on the illegal construction of villas that undermined the environment of this key area, home to a huge variety of plants and wildlife.

Now the villas have been demolished according to law and a number of officials investigated for disciplinary and law violations. It demonstrates that any behavior of ignoring or even violating the leadership's decisions on environmental protection will be met with harsh punishment.

Facing the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on China's economic and social development, the country will stay focused on strengthening ecological environmental protection without wavering or setting any bad precedents. China will not allow the idea of breaking the red line for ecological protection simply because economic development encounters difficulties.

In a larger scope, economic development and environmental protection are not contradictory. China aims at achieving coordination between both sides. It has become a social consensus that all the environmental protection efforts will be rewarded. In other words, green is gold.

The protection of the ecological environment is not an easy job. The case of illegal villa construction in the Qinling Mountains is an example of how the environment remains vulnerable to wrongdoings and corruption.

It is a big lesson local officials should always bear in mind that environmental protection should be guaranteed by a clean and upright "political ecology" where governments of all levels must make all-out efforts to apply the strictest regulations and laws in environmental protection and firmly implement the central leadership's decisions and arrangements on building an ecological civilization to produce real results.

China is striving for a moderately prosperous society in all respects. The goal requires a political will and strong actions to safeguard a green ecology, without which the statement of achieving the goal will not win the people's approval or stand up to the test of time.