New top-level environmental body for China Liu Qin 20.10.2017 Xi Jinping announces new bureaus to protect natural resources at Party Congress, reports Liu Qin (Image: Philip Roeland ) Deng Xiaoping is remembered as the architect of China’s market reform era and “opening up”. Emerging from the 19 th Communist Party of China (CPC) Congress, it looks as if Xi Jinping intends to be remembered as the architect of China’s “ecological civilisation” – the Party’s long term vision of a sustainable China. On October 19, Xi gave a speech lasting three and a half hours to the Congress in which he said that building an ecological civilisation is necessary for the continued development of the Chinese people. “The damage that humanity does to nature will ultimately harm humanity itself – this is an unavoidable rule,” said President Xi. Such strength of language is rarely seen at these high-level events and demonstrates the impo...