Against an increasingly severe trash crisis in China has appeared a peaked interest in improving waste management, but changes in China’s willingness to accept recyclable trash from foreign nations is contributing to problems of pollution elsewhere.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has announced a national carbon market and begun piloting regional carbon markets in seven of its largest cities.

For billions of people, not just in China, but all over the world, toxic air pollution is a daily fact of life. To change this, we must address consumerist lifestyles, short-term values and profit-driven frameworks that have spurred climate change and created deadly environmental problems such as air pollution.

President Xi’s new buzzword “Ecological Civilization” regarding China’s climate change efforts deserves more international attention. The phrase is an example of “environmentalism with Chinese characteristics.”

A unit of China Three Gorges Corp. is building a 1 billion yuan ($151 million) floating solar power plant, the world’s biggest, in the nation’s eastern province of Anhui.

More than 90 firms ordered to shut down as environmental authority presses on with clampdown on pollution

Like the United States, China’s falling emissions have been aided by renewable energy expansions, but are more a result of economic forces that would have existed in the absence of government effort. Germany on the other hand has made strong policy decisions that have transformed the shape of its energy infrastructure, rather than letting its energy infrastructure transform the shape of its policy. If China wishes to lead the world to two degrees, it should follow Germany’s example, not the U.S.’s.

As the president pushes the private sector to assume more of the federal government’s role in environmental protection, developing standards and related technology updating could mean new cooperation areas for business and local governments in China and the US. Green-friendly China could also become a haven for like-minded entrepreneurs in the US.

Like the United Nations and many national governments around the world, the Chinese government has sought to use education as an important means of fostering environmental stewardship and ecological sustainability. Yet, while the Ministry of Education guidelines and their plans for implementation look great on paper, they encounter significant obstacles in China’s exam-focused schools.

Now is the time, especially given the Trump Administration’s stance on environment, for China to assume the leadership role with more assertiveness and confidence, be more proactive in working with other nations, and coordinate global actions to curb pollution.