It is idealist and frankly also chauvinist to demand that developing countries adhere to the same strict environmental standards that we should expect from an already developed, industrialized country. The developed global north owes a massive environmental debt to the rest of the world, most of the carbon emissions since the industrial revolution came from Europe and North America.

China and the USSR needed to go through their own phases of developing their industry and agriculture, and that had an environmental cost. Other nations in the global south will need to do the same. The global north cannot have their cake and eat it too, living in the prosperity built on huge environmental damage and demanding that the underdeveloped nations hamstring their development for the sake of the environment. People need to be lifted out of poverty.

China needed to industrialize even if this meant accepting some adverse environmental impacts for a time. The USSR is often criticized for the ecological catastrophe around the Aral Sea but the agriculture of Central Asia needed to be developed to properly feed the millions of people living there.

Everything comes at a cost. The important thing is how you behave once you do achieve a sufficient level of development to no longer have rampant poverty in your country. And it is very clear to see that China under Xi Jinping is making huge efforts to become a more ecologically harmonious society. Now that they have developed they have the means to do so.

Exactly. They should better look at their liberal politicians who are often paid by the people sitting on accurate reports for 50 years yet hiding it to get more profits.