Over the past 35 years,China has been transformed by an economic miracle unlike anything seen in the history of the world.Hundreds of millions of people have emerged from rural poverty,cities have been re-built,cutting-edge industries have been established and a modern transportation network now knits together the country.This transformation has come at a sig-nificant cost to the environment,in terms of air pollution,water pollution,the loss and fragmentation of habitats,and threats of species extinction.Yet,as the review by Mi et al.(2021)points out,China is also now emerging as a leader in biodiversity con-servation and research[1].This focus on finding a balance be-tween biodiversity conservation and socio-economic develop-ment,sometimes referred to as'ecological civilization,'is a high priority in China because of the dependence of its enormous human population on ecosystem services and because of its astonishing richness of species.