The Mongolian steppes was where Chinese president Xi Jinping offered his televised New Year’s greeting as Chinese people worldwide celebrated the year of the horse with fireworks and feasting.
While the content of his message varied little from previous years, the choice of setting shed light on the great strains confronting today’s China.
And this year, the message was pollution.
The lunar new year, which began on Friday, is the main holiday in the Chinese calendar. Far-flung families, gathered for holiday meals, inevitably tune to state television, which this year emphasised Mr Xi’s theme of a “Chinese dream” and urged viewers to lay off on fireworks in order to reduce pollution.
Urging “continued struggle with one heart and mind” and prosperity for the motherland, Mr Xi did not address specific policies directly. But Chinese leaders’ New Year’s visits often coincide with priorities for the year ahead, including visits to coal miners, Aids patients and impoverished country villages.
This year the wide-open grasslands framed behind Xi’s dark winter coat and black fur hat are a fitting symbol for the country’s new focus on pollution, which clashes with its enormous appetite for coal.
The herders applauding Mr Xi in the freezing wind at Xilin Gol, Inner Mongolia, have been on the receiving end of a black gold rush, as state-backed mining companies from richer provinces rip up the grasslands in search of coal.
China’s leadership is now trying to reduce coal pollution in wealthier cities, but renewed plans for coal development in the north and west could cause new stresses in arid and ethnically distinct areas like Xilin Gol.
via China’s Xi Jinping calls for less pollution in year of the horse – FT.com.
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