Fraud adds to China's increasing pollution problem

Zhou Shengxian, the director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), says that fraud in assessing pollution control is prevalent in the approval of industrial projects, as many projects have passed their environmental impact assessments without really fulfilling the necessary criteria, and thereby have been contributing to China's rising pollution problem. Zhou says that, in some provinces, only 30% of projects had been checked for pollution-control compliance before receiving construction licences. However, there have been instances where plans do meet environmental standards but the required emission-control measures are not implemented.

The independent monitoring of regulatory enforcement is lacking because provincial branches of SEPA are a part of the local government and have no independence from the local governments because local SEPAs are hired and paid by the local government. Therefore, they are not in the position to question local government projects, where its main priority is economic development rather than environmental concerns.

SEPA has announced it will establish numerous centrally-controlled monitoring stations across China to prevent interference by local officials and will draw up or update regulations to include as many as 1,400 environmental protection criteria. The environmental agency also announced on that it plans to launch China's biggest environmental research project to fight water pollution.