Following decades of ignoring the environment, China has become a global leader in air and water purification, solid waste management, and wastewater treatment with dramatic growth especially in solar and wind power while major outstanding problems include continued reliance on coal and other fossil fuels especially in power plants and heavy industry.

Concise Encyclopedia of Green Technology in China provides a basic understanding of green technology in the environmental and economic policies of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Green technology is defined as any technology used to mitigate or reverse the deleterious effects of human activity on the natural environment, green technology involves the application of multiple environmental sciences including green chemistry, material sciences, and hydrology along with utilization of renewable energy sources such as geothermal, solar, tidal and wave, and wind power. Innovative technologies developed in China include mass production of electric vehicles (EVs), development of photovoltaics along with electronic devices for remote sensing, monitoring, and utilization of enhanced computer power for the analysis of big data.