China adopted an “Environmental Code” and established ecological red lines, with life imprisonment for violations.

I recently wrote about how China is carrying out large-scale scientific work in the Tian Shan Mountains, one of the most important biological refuges for wildlife on the planet. While the rest of the world is fighting over rare-earth resources and actively weakening the protected status of nature reserves, the authorities of the Celestial Empire are studying the protective functions and value of refugia. Be sure to read my earlier piece about the scale of this work. This matters if only because China was the first country to establish near-total control over the world's rare-earth resources, even before other countries began fighting over them in pursuit of leadership in the Fourth Technological Revolution. And China did not simply extract these resources; it deliberately took control of the entire chain — from mining and processing to the production of high-tech products.

And now, while other countries are fighting over rare-earth resources, the Celestial Empire has begun carrying out large-scale research into biological refuges for wildlife. It seems someone has understood the value of these territories and the importance of controlling them.

This is very serious.

China has taken another step that almost no one paid attention to: in 2026, it adopted the “Ecology and Environment Code.” It was passed on March 12 at the 4th Session of the National People's Congress. In terms of scale, the code became only the second after the Civil Code. The document contains 1,242 articles and introduced the strictest environmental protection system, consolidating legislation on air, water, soil, biodiversity, and climate protection. Chinese authorities themselves describe this as the country's transition into an “era of codified environmental law.”

Once again: watch the sleight of hand.

First, China weakens environmental protection within the country and begins extensively destroying ecosystems in pursuit of global economic leadership. They understand that the future belongs to rare-earth resources and crush this entire sector under their control before it even becomes mainstream around the world! And when the time comes for the Fourth Technological Revolution and demand for rare-earth resources emerges, governments suddenly realize in horror that they are almost completely dependent on China — it controls extraction, processing, and the production of technologies.

Then the rest of the world, almost as if it has lost its mind, rushes to destroy protected natural areas within its own borders in order to extract rare-earth resources and regain its lost “sovereignty.” Officials in Russia demand urgent permission to change the boundaries of protected areas, CIS countries sell their lands for rare-earth mining to American companies linked to Trump's sons, while President Donald Trump himself launches a massive weakening of protections for national forests across the United States, at the same time using threats to urge Canada and Greenland to voluntarily join the United States. And all of it is about rare-earth resources.

Naturally, nobody is thinking about protecting nature.

Meanwhile, China simply watches all of this unfold, continuing to maintain its control and monopoly over rare-earth resources while simultaneously launching massive programs to study the last biological refuges on the planet — the most important centers for the self-restoration of biological systems.

Doesn't it seem to you that the Chinese empire now sees the value of such territories in exactly the same way it saw the value of rare-earth resources years ago? And while every other country is fighting over “rare-earth trinkets,” China is already expanding its influence in preparation for the future struggle over clean water, living ecosystems, and control of wildlife refugia?

I want to show you the model that is now being implemented in China.

Look.

Over the past several decades, China has experienced massive environmental degradation: intensive industrial development and land conversion have destroyed wildlife habitats, reduced species populations, and caused truly catastrophic levels of pollution.

From 1970 to 2015, according to data from scientists around the world, China experienced a collapse in biodiversity. Populations of terrestrial vertebrates declined by at least half. Massive habitat destruction — forests, grasslands, and wetlands converted into farmland and urban development — together with hunting caused nearly 50% of monitored populations to disappear in just 40 years.

At the same time, roughly from the 1990s into the 2000s — within barely a decade — groundwater levels fell sharply. Aquifers were simply depleted. By the end of the 1990s, for example, groundwater levels in the main Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei aquifer were falling by roughly one meter per year. An absolute anomaly! The result was the formation of gigantic cones of depression, shrinking rivers and bodies of water, increasing salinization, and the rise of saline groundwater of marine origin. This led to the degradation of regional ecosystems — wetlands and floodplain forests — and the drying out of agricultural land. Desertification in northern China became unstoppable: by 2014, deserts covered 27.2% of the country's territory.

Water was being extracted for industry, resource extraction, and agriculture. Then, during the period from 2000 to 2020, another crisis emerged — severe pollution of China's rivers and freshwater systems; practically all of the water was genuinely poisoned. China then tried to address this through wastewater treatment and recycling systems. A brutal lesson resulting from an artificially triggered catastrophe.

Fine. Nature was destroyed. Aquifers were depleted. Rivers were polluted. The water was poisoned. But the resources that were extracted still had to be processed, didn't they?

Industrial activity peaked during the 2013–2022 period, triggering air pollution. China called its programs aimed at resolving this crisis the “Battle for Blue Skies.” I don't think I even need to explain the scale of air pollution and its consequences — severe chronic diseases, cancer, and actual deaths.

China had to spend the following years fighting the consequences.

After realizing the price of economic leadership and the creation of the modern Chinese empire, the authorities were forced to introduce “ecological red lines.” In 2017, special boundaries were established for protected natural areas. In February of that same year, authorities urgently issued the “Directive on Ecological Zoning and Strict Observance of Ecological Red Lines.”

Think about that! Things had become so bad, so vast in scale, so catastrophic, that the authorities of the Celestial Empire were forced to conduct a massive review of the country's protected areas and literally mark them with a “red line” that could not be crossed. Under this directive, key ecosystems — watersheds, springs, ancient forests, tundra, and others — were formally “sealed off” from economic development. The collapse of biodiversity was also taken into account: by 2017, estimates showed that 21.4% of vertebrates and more than 60% of endemic plants were threatened with extinction.

And if you want to understand how serious this became, consider this: China introduced life imprisonment for violations of these red lines. Only a coercive measure of this magnitude was capable of stopping the continued and ultimately complete destruction of the country's protected-area system.

The following year, in 2018, at the 13th National People's Congress, a key idea was adopted as an ideological foundation for the future development of the Celestial Empire — the concept of an “ecological civilization.” It was officially incorporated into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. The Constitution was amended to include provisions on “green development,” “respect for nature,” and the creation of a “beautiful and harmonious socialist country” alongside material progress. In addition, the same year saw the introduction into the Constitution of the principle of “responsibility of local authorities for the ecosystem of their region” — meaning that the Chinese government effectively made regional officials personally responsible for the preservation of wildlife.

China moved toward much larger reforms in 2024 — literally just recently. At an autumn Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the government officially announced the beginning of the codification of environmental legislation. The task was to urgently integrate a fragmented system — which at that time consisted of more than 30 laws, over 100 regulations, and hundreds of local acts — into a single “Ecology and Environment Code.” And I want all of my comrades to pay attention to this: in the explanatory materials accompanying the draft law, China emphasized that such a step represented a global innovation. The code, they argued, would be based on the idea of a “shared destiny of humanity and nature” and would eventually become the foundation of China's entire model of environmental governance.

From that point onward, the legislation was drafted and amended. During 2025 alone, it went through three readings and incorporated tens of thousands of comments from the public and businesses.

And then, in 2026, China officially adopted the “Ecology and Environment Code” — placing it second in importance among the country's codes.

That is what is happening in China right now. And the scale of it is genuinely astonishing!

Now I want to say something else.

China is a state characterized by extremely rapid development and by its ability to perceive and evaluate long-term horizons. It became an enormous industrial machine into which the rest of the world spent decades pouring the fuel necessary for its movement — technology, manufacturing was transferred there, and billions of dollars from corporations flowed into the country. Precisely because China was able to offer corporations cheap and advanced manufacturing without bearing the environmental costs, essentially sacrificing living nature in the process. Only afterward did the world realize that it had literally built the Chinese empire, supplied it with everything it needed, and that this industrial machine — an “enormous mechanical monster,” I would say — was now capable of operating on its own: extracting resources, copying technologies, manufacturing, and expanding.

China today is a model of what will soon happen to other states. China has already destroyed everything that should never have been touched under any circumstances, and it only came to its senses when it became necessary to urgently draw “ecological red lines.” That happened because every resident of the Celestial Empire personally experienced the consequences of environmental destruction — poisoned water, poisoned air, scorched land.

And look at where this ultimately led: when a problem affects everyone, the system itself begins moving toward urgent change.

Those who have followed me for a long time will remember what I have repeatedly said: at some point, there will be a sudden and uncontrolled collapse of global ecosystems, and every country in the world will rush to find a way out of the crisis. It will be impossible to ignore. It will be impossible to escape, because the consequences will affect everyone. And everyone will have to cough up pieces of their own lungs because of the toxic air.

Look at China today: this is exactly what will eventually happen to everyone else. The Celestial Empire simply reached this point earlier than the rest. And while the old clans managing state systems around the world continue to see China merely as an economic rival that must be “defeated by any means necessary,” and begin destroying their own protected areas in pursuit of that goal, China is changing the very model of how its empire operates.

It has not only introduced an environmental code but is also carrying out massive internal transformations. At the same time, it is conducting real reconnaissance of the ecological condition of some of the most valuable wildlife refuges on the planet — it seems the Celestial Empire has already identified what it considers the most important and valuable resource of the near future. A resource over which everyone will eventually fight to the death: clean water and living nature.

At the end of this piece, I will briefly remind you that governments themselves are openly talking about ongoing and future full-scale wars over rare-earth resources. Some European ministers have openly said that, according to their forecasts, the next stage will be wars over clean water.

Now pay attention to this: the Great Wall of China is part of China's ideology. But the real wall surrounding the Celestial Empire consists of mountain ranges — an arc formed by the Tian Shan, the Pamirs, and Tibet. And this is exactly where China is now conducting enormous scientific research. The tourist attraction called the “Great Wall of China” is merely a physical expression of the broader ideology of the Celestial Empire. And China is effectively looking at the highest and most valuable mountains on the planet surrounding its territory as its real Great Wall.

Now look even more closely:

On August 28, 2026, China adopted a completely revised version of the National Defense Mobilization Law of the People's Republic of China. It enters into force on October 1, 2026. The law defines mobilization as a mechanism designed to ensure the rapid transition of the country from peacetime to wartime and to convert its economic and social potential into defense capability. They are preparing for war.

More than that, beginning on March 1, 2026, the People's Liberation Army started issuing unified identification cards to reservists. China's Ministry of National Defense stated that these documents are used when reservists are called into active service during wartime, summoned for military training, or assigned combat-readiness missions.

In other words, the Chinese government is urgently placing the country's economy on a war footing, testing whether its military-industrial capacity can scale rapidly, and introducing strict laws governing its human reserve. This goes as far as prohibiting people from leaving their registered place of residence and requiring everyone, at the first command, to return home from wherever they may be in preparation for military operations. In essence, a legal mechanism for rapid transition between peacetime and wartime has now been introduced!

Ministers from different countries around the world are talking about future wars over water and rare-earth resources. Look once again at what China is doing today — it is spending billions on scientific research into the mountain refuges of wildlife surrounding its empire while introducing an Environmental Code with ecological red lines. I think the goals and objectives have already been defined.

© PAVEL PASHKOV