James Thornton, a professor at Oxford University, said very few people in the West has truly grasped the progress China has achieved in promoting ecological civilization, both in concept and its practical implementation. "And we see in the western press, individual stories about electric vehicles, about solar panels, or about high speed transit in China. But what is not understood even by the most advanced commentators in the Financial Times, in the Economist is that this is all part of an overarching synergistic view which the Chinese have, which is what I think is likely to save human civilization, not just Chinese civilization," he remarked.