The image Beijing sells versus the damage it leaves

China promotes an appealing story at home. Officials point to “ecological civilisation,” the vast Three-North Shelterbelt reforestation, record-setting solar farms on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, and ambitious net-zero targets. In Southeast Asia alone, Chinese financing has invested more than billions of dollars in renewable energy over the past decade. Yet just beyond China’s borders, a different reality shows up in forests cut down for commodity exports, polluted rivers near mines, and oceans strained by industrial fleets. China wants credit for buying renewable energy, but it keeps sacrificing nature whenever that is convenient.

Scarborough Shoal: environmental protection as a pretext for control

Beijing’s plan to declare an “island nature reserve” at Scarborough Shoal triggered immediate pushback. The Philippines called it a pretext for control of a feature inside its exclusive economic zone, with National Security Advisor Eduardo Año warning it is “less about protecting the environment and more about justifying [China’s] control.” The United States said the move undermines regional stability. “Beijing claiming Scarborough as a nature preserve is yet another coercive attempt,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated, noting Filipino fishermen are being shut out of traditional grounds. Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom urged China to comply with the 2016 international tribunal ruling that invalidated its sweeping South China Sea claims.

Experts call this environmental lawfare. Ray Powell of Stanford’s SeaLight Project said China used “highly destructive methods,” including artificial island-building that destroyed more than 1,800 hectares of coral reef, then tried to launder control through a conservation label. “It’s like an arsonist promoting himself to fire marshal over the ruins of a building he stole and burned,” Powell said.

Mining and the Belt and Road: prosperity for some, pollution for many

Across the Global South, communities tied to Belt and Road projects are fighting pollution and legal stonewalls. In Zambia, a toxic spill from a Chinese-run copper mine released 50 million liters of waste that contaminated rivers and farmland with heavy metals. “People we’ve talked with are losing hope,” said Zambian attorney Malisa Batakathi, warning desperate residents can be pushed into unfair deals. Chinese environmental lawyer Jingjing Zhang is working with local partners to pursue accountability and teach strategies for navigating China’s political and legal systems.

In Indonesia, protests, strikes, and government sanctions have hit Chinese-run nickel hubs after allegations of environmental violations. More than three-quarters of Indonesia’s nickel refining capacity is controlled by Chinese firms, with two companies accounting for over 70 percent. In Myanmar, rare earth extraction near the Thai border coincides with spikes in arsenic and other toxins, and Thai tests in northern provinces found arsenic nearly five times higher than international drinking standards. Campaigners warn that a Chinese-funded hydropower dam in Laos could trap and concentrate polluted sediments.

The deforestation China imports but does not count

China’s domestic green branding collides with a large, off-books footprint overseas. Its appetite for soy, beef, palm oil, and tropical timber drives damage in critical ecosystems. A Forest Trends analysis linked China’s tropical-commodity demand to as much as five percent of all carbon emissions from tropical and subtropical deforestation between 2013 and 2022. The embedded carbon is sizable. Imported deforestation tied to Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia accounts for up to 200 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equal to about 20 to 30 percent of China’s domestic agricultural emissions. These emissions do not appear in Beijing’s Paris Agreement pledges, which creates a credibility gap.

The Amazon illustrates the scale. In 2022, ninety-six percent of China’s soy imports came from regions linked to deforestation, compared with fifty-five percent for the European Union. In Indonesia, palm oil deforestation on Sumatra surged 3.7 times between 2020 and 2022, partly fueled by rising Chinese demand.

Oceans under pressure: plastics, factory fleets, and coral loss

China is the top source of marine plastic debris, with its own experts estimating up to one million tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2017. The damage to fishing, tourism, and public health runs into the billions. China also subsidizes the world’s largest fishing fleet, including distant-water vessels that officials around the world accuse of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Despite claims of “zero tolerance,” the behavior is widespread and undermines global fish stocks and coastal livelihoods. The United States has repeatedly called out predatory practices, including around the Galápagos.

Air, climate, and chemicals: the domestic record still falls short

China has been the world’s largest annual greenhouse-gas emitter since 2006. Its energy-related emissions are twice those of the United States and nearly one third of the global total, rising more than 80 percent between 2005 and 2019 while U.S. emissions fell. Former President Donald J. Trump summarized the pattern bluntly: “China dumps millions and millions of tons of plastic and trash into the oceans, overfishes other countries’ waters, destroys vast swaths of coral reef, and emits more toxic mercury into the atmosphere than any country anywhere in the world.”

Scientists also detected a resurgence of banned CFC-11 from eastern China between 2014 and 2017, threatening ozone recovery. Although air in major cities has improved since U.S. Embassy monitoring exposed the scale of pollution in 2008, overall levels remain unhealthy and affect downwind countries. Former Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said too much of China’s economy runs on “willful disregard for air, land, and water quality.”

Forests and wildlife: consumption that fuels crime

China is the world’s largest consumer of trafficked wildlife and illegal timber, driving deforestation, corruption, and species decline. While Beijing enacted a near-complete ivory ban in 2017, critics continue to press for a permanent end to sales of high-risk wildlife in wet markets. Without strict safeguards, Chinese investment in infrastructure and resource extraction can displace communities, damage water, and fragment habitats. Even the World Wildlife Fund has warned that Belt and Road corridors overlap more than 1,700 critical biodiversity sites and the ranges of 265 threatened species.

Rivers and neighbors: unilateral water manipulation on the Mekong

China’s cascade of mega-dams on the upper Mekong, combined with opaque water management and abrupt flow changes, has worsened droughts and damaged fisheries and agriculture downstream. Researchers using satellite data and river records connected major disruptions in natural flows to dam construction and operations. Countries in the basin say they cannot manage floods and droughts effectively without full, year-round data sharing.

Beijing excels at small, cumulative steps that shift facts on the ground. Whether it is a “nature reserve” shielding a sovereignty claim or a pledge of green finance that accompanies pollution-heavy projects, the pattern is consistent. Pollution-intense industries that face stricter rules in China relocate to countries with weaker enforcement. Host governments, eager for growth and processing at home, accept environmental risks. The result is a two-track policy: green at home, grey abroad.

Analysts argue China should extend ecological civilisation beyond its borders. That means transparent reporting on high-risk commodity imports, consumption-based accounting of embedded emissions in its climate pledges, and stronger multilateral norms on supply-chain biodiversity impacts. As the largest buyer of many forest-risk commodities and a dominant player in heavy industry, China has unmatched leverage to improve global outcomes. Until it uses that leverage responsibly, its claim to environmental leadership looks like branding, not stewardship.