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Worsening Environment Under Control in China: Report
China has reduced the discharge amount of 12 major pollutants by 10 to 15 percent since 1995, according to a report issued Thursday by the State Statistical Bureau (SSB).
The government hopes to achieve another 10-percent reduction between 2001 and 2005, said Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).
The reduction took place as China gained rapid economic growth in spite of high population pressure, backward industrial technologies and less developed urban infrastructure -- a feat considered remarkable by environmentalists.
China launched its largest ever-environmental protection program in 1996 to reduce industrial pollution nationwide and improve air and water quality in the country's 46 major cities.
Under the program, the amount of 12 major pollutants should be reduced to designated levels by 2000, and all of the 230,000 polluting industrial firms must meet the industrial pollution discharge standards set by the central and local governments or face closure.
The primary goal of the program had been achieved by the end of 1999, said a SEPA official.
The SSB report showed that more than 90 percent of those polluting factories have reached the discharge standard. Some 93.6 percent of 18,000 major polluting factories, which produced 65 percent of the country's industrial pollution, also passed the check.
The program also aimed to make the quality of air and water in residential and industrial districts in 46 major cities reach the standards set by the central government.
The 46 cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, and provincial capital cities, coastal open cities and cities designated as major tourist destinations.
So far, 33 cities have met the standards on water quality, and 22 cities for air quality. In the first 11 months last year, Beijing witnessed 165 days with clean air.
Lead-free gasoline has been used nationwide since July 1 last year, a move which is expected to prevent 1,500 tons of lead from discharging into the air.
The government promoted pollution control programs in three heavily-polluted rivers and three lakes around China in the last five years. In these areas, 55 sewage treatment plants have been built and another 111 are under construction.
According to the SSB report, the 1,227 nature reserves in China have covered about one-tenth of the country's territory, with the total acreage topping 98.2 million hectares.
The country has planted 46 million hectares of trees so far, the most in the world, and 158-million-hectare forests have emerged resulting in a forest coverage rate of 16.55 percent.
Analysts note that the progress of the environmental protection could be attributed, to a large extent, to the 248.7 billion yuan the government invested from 1996 to 1999.
The government budget to protect the environment continued to rise in these three years and has accounted for 1 percent of China 's GDP since 1999.
Xie said that the rate will probably go up to 1.2 percent in the next five years.
However, the environment in China is still worsening, though much more slowly, environmentalists said.
Pollution in rural areas is attracting attention but the protection work is relatively weak there due to the lack of technologies and human resources.
In urban areas, the pollution coming from daily life has increased. According to the SSB report, the discharge amount of sewage is larger than that of industrial sewage.
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