Beijing's Environmental Plan Cites Need for Enforcement

BEIJING, Nov. 26 -- The Chinese government released a long-delayed environmental protection plan Monday that promises added efforts to tackle the country's increasingly foul air and water and for the first time emphasizes a need to reduce greenhouse gases, officials said.

The 11th Five-Year Plan to protect the environment, for 2005 to 2010, also pledges to make polluters pay for cleanup. The plan left unclear whether the government will force local officials and businesses to abide by its terms.

"This time, it's stated clearly which areas should be taken care of by the government, and which areas are the responsibility of enterprises," said Liu Youbin, a spokesman for the State Environmental Protection Administration. Compared with the previous five-year plan, this document "makes its goals clearer and simpler."

The plan includes previously announced targets that officials have failed to meet, including reducing pollutants such as sulfur dioxide by 10 percent. It warns that China's emphasis on rapid economic growth is severely affecting public health.

"The system does not work smoothly. Investment for environmental protection is not enough. Laws and regulations are not respected. It's very hard to punish those who violate the law and law enforcement is not strict enough," the plan observes. "Currently the conflicts between China's economic and social development and its limited environmental resources are getting more and more serious each day."

China is likely to surpass the United States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases, according to the International Energy Agency. At the end of the previous five-year plan, water in nearly 26 percent of lakes and rivers to be cleaned up was so contaminated that it could not be safely touched, the Reuters news agency reported. Medical experts have begun to warn that more Chinese are being born with deformities in part because of pollution.

The five-year plan reflects efforts by the State Environmental Protection Administration to raise awareness, improve funding for environmental protection and counter negative publicity about the government's handling of the environment, which remains a sensitive topic in China.

The government continues to hide pollutant data from the public and sometimes from its own researchers. It has tried to censor reports identifying pollution as a leading cause of death for hundreds of thousands of Chinese. And it fails to give environmental officials the same powers as those who oversee the red-hot economy.

Pan Yue, the outspoken deputy head of the State Environmental Protection Administration, recently blamed departmental infighting and lack of central planning for holding back improvement. He said his department, caught between inadequate laws and business interests pushing projects, was powerless to stop cities from allowing too many polluting factories in one area.

"The environmental assessment process that industry must pass to build new factories or mines was blocked at the front, and harried by troops at the rear," Pan said in the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party's Central Committee.

Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.