Towards a sustainable China

On October 13th, the Volvo Group launched a White Paper at its Toward Sustainable Cities forum in Beijing, illustrating the findings of worldwide case studies and analyzing the country´s current situation.
On October 13th, the Volvo Group launched a White Paper at its Toward Sustainable Cities forum in Beijing.

“As a global leader in the transportation sector, the Volvo Group has attached great importance to China. Through thousands of trials and errors, certain satisfactory results have now been made and collected to this White Paper. We hope it can provide a reference for policy-makers in China, and make a contribution to the sustainable development of cities,” said the President of Volvo Group China, Roger Chen, at the forum hosted in partnership with the Chinese language website of the Financial Times, ftchinese.com.

Based on the national situation in China, the White Paper analyzes population expansion trends in future cities, innovative city planning ideas and the policies of energy conservation and carbon dioxide emission reduction. It states that traffic congestion, road safety, energy consumption, and environmental pollution are the four main aspects which should be targeted to help realize sustainability. Centered on the above problems, the White Paper elaborate upon a series of solutions as well as quoting successful practices from numerous other countries. Lastly, it suggest that industry leaders, academia and policy-makers cooperate and take into account economic and environmental costs, as well as the future benefit to society, by supporting new technology applications in the transportation sector.

“The concept of sustainable cities contains issues of balancing between resource exploitation and utilization, and the coordination between economic development and environmental protection. It indeed requires participation and the Towards Sustainable Cities forum is intended to build an open platform for the public to discuss how to achieve this sustainable development,” said Roger Chen.

On the Towards Sustainable Cities forum, representatives from relevant industries, academic fields and government, along with business leaders, discussed the topics “new energy, new transportation” and “smart transportation in the internet plus area”. The aim was to highlight new thoughts and perspectives for sustainable transportation and the growth of cities in China and the world.

“China’s rapid development has surpassed that of the major world powers, culminating at the cost of environmental pollution. As a global media organization, the Financial Times is not only concerned about the economy but also the sustainable development of society. We are pleased to work with the Volvo Group to discuss China’s urban sustainable development and hope this will trigger further attention and discussion from the public,” said the CEO of FTChinese.com, Tracy Zhang.