Ｃｈｏｎｇｍｉｎｇ：Ｔａｋｉｎｇ　ｔｈｅ　Ｅｃｏｌｏｇｉｃａｌ　Ｒｏａｄ　ｏｆ　Ｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｍｅｎ.docVIP

Ｃｈｏｎｇｍｉｎｇ：Ｔａｋｉｎｇ　ｔｈｅ　Ｅｃｏｌｏｇｉｃａｌ　Ｒｏａｄ　ｏｆ　Ｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｍｅｎ 　　DURING the 17th CPC National Congress in October 2007, I interviewed Sun Lei, secretary of the CPC Chongming County Committee. His description of Chongming, sometimes called the “Shangri-la of Shanghai,” aroused my curiosity. So on a drizzling autumn day I took a boat to this island nestled in the Yangtze River Delta. After landing I was immediately struck by the island’s quiet, a stark contrast to the bustle of Shanghai. There were no high-rise buildings or hurrying pedestrians. I sauntered into the peaceful setting as if entering a meditative wonderland. 　　Chongming is one of the three islands comprising Chongming County at the mouth of the Yangtze River. From its birthplace on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Yangtze flows through ten provinces before reaching this point. The tons of silt brought here every year by the river’s flow have formed the world’s three largest alluvial islands: Chongming, Changxing and Hengsha. Chongming is in fact the third largest island of China, surpassed only by Taiwan and Hainan. If the Yangtze River is a dragon stretched across the nation, and the Yangtze River Delta its head, then the three islands are bright pearls in the dragon’s crown. They are also the site of a new experiment in ecologically-friendly development. 　　On July 27, 2004, Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China and president of the People’s Republic of China, made an inspection tour of Chongming. He instructed that the local people should, under the philosophy of the scientific mode of development, retain the advantages of their wonderful natural surrounds and take an environmentally sustainable path of development. 　　When I spoke to Sun Lei in Beijing he commented, “We are seeking to fully protect the environment, breaking the past mould of polluting first and tackling environmental problems later, to build a modern ecologically-friendly island. Blazing a new path is more difficult than t