From 21 to 23 February, DCZ experts Ahmatjan ROUZI and Michaela BOEHME attended the Sino-German Green and Sustainable Action Days in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Headed by German Ambassador Flor as part of Germany’s new Strategy on China, a delegation of over 100 representatives from German business, science, and civil society organizations attended the event to engage with Ningxia counterparts on the green transformation of the economy and to promote civil society exchanges. The event was jointly organized by the German Embassy in Beijing and the Ningxia Foreign Affairs Office.
The event was opened by the Secretary-General of the CPC Ningxia Committee, Dongsheng LEI, and Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to China, Patricia FLOR. The speakers stressed the importance of Sino-German cooperation to jointly respond to the climate crisis and accelerate the transformation towards a green and sustainable economy. Speaking on behalf of the DCZ, Michaela BOEHME outlined Germany’s policies for the sustainable transformation of agriculture and identified areas of common action for both countries. Representatives from Ningxia government departments and German institutions, including the German Chamber of Commerce, the German Engineering Industry Association (VDMA), and Goethe Institute China, presented their organizations and outlined their expectations for cooperation.
Resource-saving technologies hold potential for cooperation
The subsequent sub-forums provided opportunities for more in-depth discussions between German and Chinese delegation members. In a sub-forum on sustainability—co-moderated by DCZ expert Michaela BOEHME and German Embassy representative Bianca FLUCK—discussions centered on how to tackle plastic pollution in soils and accelerate the transformation towards alternative sources of energy.
A subforum on resource-conserving agriculture that brought together agricultural machinery companies from Germany and Ningxia focused on the potential of new agricultural technologies to save resources without compromising productivity. In his keynote on agricultural digitalization, DCZ expert Ahmatjan ROUZI examined the current state of digitalization in both countries and highlighted potential avenues for collaboration. The sub-forum also shared lessons learned from the Sino-German Crop Production and Agrotechnology Demonstration Park—a bilateral cooperation project carried out from 2015 to 2022 between the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) and Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Reclamation and Development Corporation (SKIAD).
Site visits highlight sustainable development potential of Ningxia
The conference was followed by two days of intensive site visits to green transformation projects representative of the Ningxia region. Of particular relevance to the work of the DCZ was a 2.000-hectare agri-photovoltaics project by Baofeng Energy Group that combines the organic production of goji berries with the generation of solar energy. With a capacity of 640 gigawatts, the installation provides energy for the electrolysis of green hydrogen used by the company to produce chemical products. Claimed to be the largest green hydrogen project in the world, this process helps Baofeng save over 600.000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite its semi-arid conditions and fragile ecology, Ningxia has also developed into one of China’s top wine-producing regions, supported by drip-irrigation infrastructure and wine-growing practices adapted to the local conditions. In Ningxia, the wine industry is not only lauded for combating desertification but also for providing livelihoods for local farmers relocated from Xihaigu—the poorest and least fertile part of the region.
The visits highlighted the transformation potential and policy diversity on the sub-national level in China. As a landlocked and traditionally poor region, Ningxia has been promoting the high-quality and green development of its economy—not least spurred by several visits of Chinese President Xi Jinping. More in-depth analysis would be necessary to assess potential conflicts or tradeoffs between Ningxia’s ambitious water, land, and energy targets. Particularly technologies that increase resource-efficiency appear to represent a promising pathway for further collaboration.
(With contributions by Ahmatjan Rouzi.)
