Xingtai, where I am from, spent years on lists no city wants to be on — among the most polluted in China — and spent the years after that getting off them. Watching that turnaround as a resident, and watching my father's company work the environmental business inside it, taught me the version of environmental policy that never appears in a textbook: how abatement decisions are actually priced inside firms, what compliance costs do to hiring, and why the same regulation reads differently in a mayor's office and at a factory gate.
From 2025-2026 I will be working hands-on in these projects during my internship there. A dedicated section — with concrete mechanisms, what was measured, and what changed — will be published as the engagement produces verifiable results.