During the 11th Five-Year Plan, China is going to invest 1,400 billion yuan, more than 1.5 percent of its total GDP over next five years, to deal with matters in six areas such as water pollution, atmospheric environment, solid wastes, etc.

According to He Bingguang, director of Department of Environment and Resource Conservation of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, China will invest 180 billion yuan to install equipment that can treat 40 million tons of polluted water per day in the cities and towns across ten large river basins of China and will invest 200 billion yuan in industrial waste water treatment.

China will focus on improving the air quality of 113 important cities. It will take as much as 300 billion yuan to fight sulfur dioxide pollution, and a further 200 billion yuan to control car, smoke and dust emission, etc. within these cities.

Mr. He also revealed that China plans to build 31 province-level hazardous waste treatment centers. He said that China is going to take 15 billion yuan to do collective treatment of hazardous wastes, 20 billion yuan to comprehensively reuse disused resources and industrial solid wastes, and 30 billion yuan to build non-hazardous treatment facilities for urban refuse. As well as this, China will invest 150 billion yuan to control soil and water erosion, to reclaim the lands in mine areas, etc. among which 24.8 billion yuan will be used for the environmental protection project of rural areas. It will also spend 3.1 billion yuan in nuclear safety and environmental radiation protection.

By People's Daily Online