China looks to speed up fight against pollution

China's energy-hungry, high-polluting industries continued to grow too fast last year, putting huge pressures on the environment and causing air quality to worsen, the country's pollution agency said.

Premier Li Keqiang declared war on pollution in a major policy address this month, but the country has long struggled to strike a balance between protecting the environment and keeping up economic growth.

China is still too slow to reform its resource-intensive economy, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement on its website.

"The pace of restructuring and upgrading industries has slowed, the mode of development remains crude, and emissions of atmospheric pollutants have long exceeded environmental capacity," it said.

Rapid urbanisation has brought dust from new housing and road building, while more traffic increased emissions.

Slower wind speeds than usual in northern China were an additional contributing factor last year.

Only three out of 74 Chinese cities fully complied with state pollution standards last year, the ministry said earlier this month.

Separately, China hopes to deal a heavy blow to businesses that illegally discharge wastewater, the Premier said during a special State Council meeting on energy savings and emissions reduction, in remarks posted on the body's website this week.

Mr Li said the government would crack down hard on such activities by businesses and on local officials who have ignored basic social responsibility and legal liability by failing to provide adequate oversight of the wastewater discharge activities of companies in their jurisdictions.

Only 47.4 per cent of the surface water in the country's lakes, rivers and reservoirs can meet water quality standards that make it usable under its functional zoning, Dr Jiao Yong, Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, said at a March 21 news briefing.

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