South China Morning Post
March 15, 2006

Communiqu√© from China’s State Environmental Protection Administration notes that only a third of mainland cities meet state air quality standards and almost all major rivers are polluted.

Some progress has been made in environmental protection in China, but the air and water pollution problem remains a serious one, environmental watchdogs say, as the nation celebrates World Environment Day on June 5. According to a communiqu√© from the State Environmental Protection Administration Tuesday, air quality in 46 major cities has improved and the water pollution situation did not get much worse last year. But, in spite of the progress, the communiqu√© noted that only a third of mainland cities meet state air quality standards and almost all major rivers are polluted. And major lakes like Taihu and Dianchi also remain polluted. Thirty per cent of the land surface suffers from acid rain, and there has been an increase in red tide occurrences in offshore areas, the report says. In a televised conference on pollution controls, on May 23, Xie Zhenhua, the environmental protection administration’s head, said that more than 30 per cent of the factories closed because of pollution problems are trying to resume operations. China shut down 84,000 polluting factories in the past five years. But, Mr Xie has warned that water quality was dropping in the first quarter of this year. According to a report issued last year by the National People’s Congress’s Environment and Resources Commission, pollution caused 83 billion yuan (US$9.91 billion) worth of economic damage in 1999. To be more specific, water pollution was the cause of 50 billion yuan of that, air pollution the cause of 20 billion yuan, and solid waste and noise accounted for the other 13 billion yuan.