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• China’s fuel-efficiency standard for cars is currently 43 miles per gallon. The US plans to improve it’s standards to 35 mpg by 2020.
• China announced plans to be the leading producer of hybrid and all-electric cars in 3 years, in April 2009. In addition, subsidies of up to $8,800 are being offered to taxi fleets and local government agencies in 13 cities for each hybrid or all-electric vehicle.
  
• The world’s fastest train debuted in December 2009, from Wuhan to Guangzhou, crossing 3 provinces in China.
  
• China now leads the world in hydroelectric power providing 20% of the country’s power.
  
• Approval of new industrial projects in cities along China’s four major rivers has been suspended indefinitely.
  
• China is taking environmental enforcement seriously. Chief executives of companies found responsible for waste-dumping are being fined 50 percent of their previous year’s salary. In August 2009, two chemical factory officials were convicted of releasing carbolic acid into a river and they were sentenced to prison terms of 6 and 11 years.
  
• In the last year alone, so many new solar panel makers emerged in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents
  
• A “green credit policy,” which instructs banks not to give loans to energy-intensive, polluting industries and to recall loans when companies are later found to be violation of environmental regulations, went into effect in July 2007.
  
• China “has nearly finished the construction of a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in just five hours, compared with 12 hours today. By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.”
  
• An ambitious renewable-energy program, in which hydroelectric, biomass, wind and solar power are to account for 10 percent of China’s total energy use by 2010 and 15 percent by 2020, was made public in March 2008.