MEP Promotes Beijing Experiences in Controlling Pollutions    

On November 12th Zhou Shengxian, minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) disclosed at the 2008 annual meeting of International Cooperation on Environment and Development that China would raise RMB1 trillion for environmental protection in three years.
   To address the global financial crisis, the Chinese government recently issued many measures to expand domestic demand, including pollution control. Zhou thought it may be a good chance for China to develop environmental protection into an important industrial sector to drive domestic demand. The new sectors of developing new alternative energies and renewable energies, saving water, energy conservation, saving resources, pollution treatment may grow up into new points helping economy to pick up.
   According to Zhou's presentation, China's COD emissions and sulfur dioxide emissions in the first three quarters fell by 2.7% and 4.2% respectively year over year. In his speech, Beijing's experiences in controlling pollutions during the summer's Olympics and Paralympics were introduced at the meeting and were announced to be promoted in the whole country. To solve the pollutions, the Beijing government has poured more than RMB100 billion in building a green Olympics. A plenty of outdated factories were closed or moved out from Beijing and the power generating works in the surrounding provinces have been equipped with desulfurization facilities, while the annual economic growth of the capital city reached 12.4% on average between 2001 and 2008.
   Zhou showed that China should encourage clean production by setting up a mechanism integrating force and appraisal and try hard in building a fair, open, uniform industrial market.