China to expand environmental checks to more cities and regions in anti-pollution drive
Some 200 teams with 18,000 inspectors and support staff will be sent out to focus on heavy industry, energy, transport and land use, ministry says
China will expand environmental inspections to more cities and regions in a new round of checks from this month to April next year, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said in a statement on Friday, part of a three-year anti-pollution plan.
Apart from smog-heavy Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and nearby areas, the inspections – to run from June 11 to April 28, 2019 – will also target the Yangtze River Delta region, including Shanghai, and Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, and some 11 cities in the northwestern provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi.
Two hundred teams with a total of around 18,000 inspectors and support staff will be sent out, tripling the workforce for the inspections carried out during this past winter.
The curbs and other anti-pollution measures have added to industry costs and disrupted growth. In China’s steel capital of Tangshan, GDP growth fell to 5.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year, when winter production restrictions were most intense, dropping from 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2017.
“The intensified environmental checks will focus on industrial, energy, transportation and land-use sectors, and continue to enforce production staggering and coal-to-gas conversion,” the ministry said in its statement.