Put a brand-new paint and an ordinary one into two fish tanks. One hour later, fish in the tank with the ordinary paint are poisoned and die, while the fish in the other tank survive.

This experiment demonstrates that a new kind of paint, invented by Wang Shuan, member of the Paint Standardization Technical Committee of China, is entirely pollution-free and harmless to human beings, noted experts here.

According to Wang, a paint producer named Zhong Bang in central China's Henan Province, has started to produce his new paint, and already received sizable orders from Western businesses at a recent trade fair in the United States.

China's paint industry has made rapid progress since the late 1970s when the country implemented the opening-up and reform policy.

Official statistics show that China has 4,500 paint producers, most of them small firms with little new technology producing traditional organic chemical soluble paints.

Surveys conducted by the World Health Organization indicate that traditional paints are usually poisonous and can do great harm to people.

The world suffers from considerable economic losses annually, as much as tens of billions of US dollars, due to environmental pollution caused by these paints.

Wang's new and environment-friendly paint, therefore, will inevitably have a bright future, and can be widely used in fields as diverse as households and national defense, experts said.

The study of environment-friendly paint in China began in 1984, and most insiders are bullish about its market prospects.

According to the State Economic and Trade Commission, the demand for paint in China is expected to reach two million tons next year, far beyond the country's current production capacity.