The move has invited vehement criticism from a rainbow coalition of 23 states and local governments, environmentalists and others who had reposed faith in former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan aimed at cutting carbon emissions. However, Trump’s top priority is to speedily create jobs for blue-collar America.

But not many may have noticed how Trump’s executive order has unwittingly offered the US’ main competitor, China, a golden opportunity to establish itself as a world leader. Though lagging miles behind the US in global industrial evolution, China became the second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases within decades of launching unfettered industrialisation under its totalitarian regime. The new millennium has witnessed China topping the pollution charts.

Beijing wishes to change course. It realises that economic and military clout alone cannot ensure it the position it seeks in the comity of nations.

President Xi Jinping has been trying to align China’s environmental policies with its geopolitical objectives.

While Trump’s environment-adverse move may have come as a godsend, Beijing has been working on environmental reforms, sincerely, for around three years now. Increasingly stringent environmental policies are in evidence following the promulgation of the 13th Five-Year Plan in 2016.

Beijing institutionalised environmental inspections in 2016 in the country’s 16 provinces and regions, beginning with Hebei. Non-compliance invites penalties ranging from a 15-day detention to complete shutdown of the erring factory. It may be hard to believe that fines amounting to $22 billion were extracted from faltering companies in Beijing alone in November 2016. Tianjin registered a 56% jump in the number of fines imposed in 2015-16. The chairman of Rui Hai International Logistics was sentenced to death in late 2016 for his role in serial blasts in warehouses of Tianjin port in 2015.

According to a document leaked in mid-February, Beijing proposes to slash production of steel, fertiliser and aluminium by half in 28 major cities and provinces in northeast China over the winter. Beijing also wants to launch this year itself an emissions trading system, but is handicapped by the lack of expertise. On the radar are power and industrial sectors.

Xi admits that it is a tough call given the vastness and regional diversity of China. The adverse impact on employment is no less a concern. But he has his eyes set on the strategic gains that stricter environmental policies promise — domestically and internationally.

The high moral ground on the environmental front has so far been the preserve of the West. China wants and needs to carve out its place in the sacrosanct space for a bigger role in world affairs. But it is difficult for Xi to implement environmental reforms in a country hitherto fixated to GDP growth.

As such, China’s growth is on the decline. More than the people, it is the satraps of the Communist Party of China who need to feel convinced about the efficacy and sustainability of the president’s dream plan. This, despite the fact that almost half of China’s surface water sources fail to meet quality standards and groundwater contamination is an existential problem in urban areas. Soil quality is a big casualty and wearing masks and carrying imported oxygen containers is a norm in smog-ruled areas, especially in winters.

So, China’s National Development and Reform Commission recently came up with a reassuring announcement that compliance with environmental policies will now surpass GDP growth in appraising provincial and local governments. Xi felt compelled to publicly tell Hebei’s government not to remain “tied up in GDP”. He is getting support from China’s new middle class that is more aware of global developments.

China is gradually bidding adieu to the low-end manufacturing and exports model and is trying to tightly embrace high-end manufacturing and internal consumption construct. The obvious goal is to position China among leaders of low-carbon technology development and manufacturing. Also, investment of hundreds of billion dollars has been allocated for solar and wind energy.

Xi’s commitment at World Economic Forum in January to lead the global effort against climate change needs to be seen in this perspective. If the US is ceding ground, then China will not like to miss the opportunity of being its most prominent occupant.