It's undeniable that there was a massive improvement and a lot of investment into restoring and developing the area, but i think the first picture is still sort of misleading.
There seems to be a filter on it that makes it look more bleak than it actually was. Also, i doubt that it was taken at the same time of year in the same kind of weather. If you photograph the same area on a cloudy day during winter or late fall when the trees are bare and the grass dead, it will look very different than a photo taken of the exact same location on a sunny summer day when everything is green.
This is a common trick that western media employ when they want to portray communist or former communist countries as dystopian, run-down, or dirty. They purposely pick a time of year when things just naturally look worse. This works especially well in Russia for example where in spring after the snow melts the streets get super messy and muddy but it's still too early for the vegetation to have come back to life.
Not saying that this is necessarily the case here. We all know that China's overall conditions were much worse even just a few decades ago. There was a lot more smog, much less care taken for the environment, the focus was all on rapid development with little regard for the negative side-effects. That has now drastically changed with the "Green Hills and Clear Waters" policy direction under Xi Jinping.
This is a great example of China's positive improvements and environmentally conscious development. But one should still be skeptical when seeing such drastic differences.
