President Xi Jinping's attendance at the climate change conference in Paris demonstrates China's proactive approach to its role on the global stage, said Bernard Dewit, chairman of the Belgian-Chinese Chamber of Commerce since 1996.

"It is significant that President Xi himself will be attending the climate summit, showing Beijing's commitment to tackling the climate change challenge," said Dewit in an interview with China Daily. "This shows how important the conference is in China's view."

During previous months, China and the United States, the world's biggest economies and carbon emitters, have worked together on reducing carbon pollutants.

"Before, you did not have that. ... If two of the biggest countries in the world have strong commitment, that can have consequences for the others, too," Dewit said at his law firm in Brussels.

China is undergoing a "big change" in ecological thinking and environmental policy, he said.

During the early years of the reform and opening-up in the 1980s, China focused on boosting production and renovating industry to lift people from poverty through production and exports.

"What we see now is that China has reached a certain level of development and can focus more on the well-being of its citizens in their daily lives, not just in the cities, but also in the countryside," he said.

According to Dewit, China's efforts to protect the environment can bring more business opportunities, and this is significant because there is a danger that some would like to stop development and industrial production to return to a kind of paradise.

"That is pure imagination. We have to be realistic. What I find encouraging about your government is that it's realistic," he said.

China has balanced development and environmental protection, he said.

"We have also to be aware that countries like China are still developing, but we will make efforts to cut pollution, to better protect the environment, and we have to work for the next generations," he said. Dewit said he has noticed that China is putting great effort into green development in the upcoming 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

That commitment will further expand its cooperation with Europe, he said, which has developed high technology in environmental protection over the past 20 years.

Increasingly, Chinese companies are conducting research and development in environmental protection, and European companies have made advances because they have been active in that field for years.

"The EU can be useful to China, having some fields of high technology that China does not have," he said.

"That can be a nice complementarity between Chinese and European companies."

fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/01/2015 page2)