As the annual World Environment Day arrives today and underlines the urgency of the global green transition, a leading expert said that China has grown its green loan and green bond markets into the world's largest in a few years, representing a shift from "zero" to "hero."

Behind the rapid growth is a "top-down approach" to promote green finance markets, which can serve as a helpful example for many other emerging economies and developing countries, said Ma Jun, president of the Institute of Finance and Sustainability and chairman of the Green Finance Committee of the China Society for Finance and Banking.

Ma told China Daily that the country is also collaborating with the European Union and Singapore to develop a new version of the Common Ground Taxonomy, which is a list of economic activities that are recognized both by China's and EU's green standards. This development will upgrade the existing bilateral cooperation initiative into a multilateral project and further boost international green capital flows.

Looking ahead, Ma said the country's green finance sector still has huge development potential, given the need to decarbonize the hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement and petrochemicals as well as room to catch up with developed economies in terms of products that incorporate environmental, social and governance or ESG considerations.