Mainland policymakers are resorting to drastic measures in their efforts to cut down on the amount of energy wasted by industry.
At the weekend, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered more than 2,000 companies in heavy industries ranging from cement production and aluminium smelters to paper mills to shut down their older and less efficient plants or face stiff penalties.
The move, which affects prominent state-owned companies including aluminium giant Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco) and leading iron and steel concern Baosteel, is being presented as Beijing's most spirited attempt yet to meet national energy efficiency targets set out in the current five-year plan.
Back in 2005, state planners promised to cut China's energy intensity - the amount of energy needed to produce each yuan of economic output - by 20 per cent by the end of this year.
That sounds ambitious, but in theory the target shouldn't have been too hard to achieve. China's industries are expanding rapidly and new plants - modern aluminium smelters, say - are far more efficient than those built 20 years ago.
What's more, with economic development, the output of service industries - retail businesses, media, financial services and the like, all of which use much less energy than old-fashioned manufacturing businesses - tends to rise and form a greater share of overall economic output. As a result, energy intensity tends to decrease as a natural consequence of economic growth.