China's National New Areas in the ecological transition

China's National New Area program surged in the 2010s and drew ecological criticism as these projects' rapid urban expansion often threatened vulnerable ecosystems. However, the recent national ecological restoration efforts also have the potential to direct the 19 projects to shift from stimulating economic development to pursuing sustainable living environments. This essay studies the National New Areas on two scales: the first section traces the 19 projects' ecological performance by measuring two vegetation indices; the second section compares two exemplary cases of Binhai New Area (proposed in 2006) and Xiong'an New Area (2017) to reveal how the planning thinking evolved over a decade. The results show increases of 14 projects' mean Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and 12 projects' mean Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) from 2013 to 2021. The comparative case study suggests that Xiong'an has a promising ecological future due to the deconcentration-driven policies and consistent ecological plans, whereas the development-driven Binhai's contradictory plans led the early ecological ambition to an environmental cliche. This paper concludes that China's National New Areas are undertaking an ecological transition in the context of ecological civilization, which calls for planning practitioners' attention to renewing their working approaches and skill-sets to adapt to the paradigm shift.