In 2015, while joining deliberations with NPC deputies from Jiangxi province, Xi said that "protecting the environment is ensuring livelihood", adding that the eco-environment should be safeguarded as if protecting "one's own eyes and life", showing his resolve to curb the widespread pollution that was choking the world's second-largest economy.

　　In 2016, during discussions with NPC deputies from Heilongjiang province, he called for drawing red lines for environmental protection and leaving sufficient space for sustainable development, in order to leave a beautiful homeland with blue skies, green land and clear waters for future generations.

　　In 2018, addressing fellow lawmakers from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Xi stressed efforts to strengthen the protection of forests and wetlands, to step up the fight against desertification and pollution, and to build the "Green Great Wall" along the northern border of the motherland.

　　Christoph Nedopil Wang, a professor of economics at Griffith University in Australia who specializes in the green economic transition in the Asia-Pacific region, said that earlier stages of China's approach to green development focused primarily on visible issues such as air quality and PM2.5 levels.

　　"Over the past decade, China's philosophy has shifted from reactive pollution control — often described as a 'pollute first, clean up later' approach — to a proactive, systemic economic transformation," he said.

　　Xi has repeatedly emphasized during the two sessions the need to maintain "strategic resolve" in advancing ecological civilization. In 2019, while addressing Inner Mongolia deputies to the NPC, he stressed that environmental protection and economic development are closely integrated and complement each other, and warned against sacrificing ecological standards for short-term growth.