Part of my career was spent in financial services. I was involved in the listing of the first batch of Chinese companies on the New York Stock Exchange, followed by many H-share and B-share companies in Hong Kong. For a while I was also an analyst.

But since I returned to work on the Chinese mainland, I have gradually developed a liking for one particular government agency. It is the State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA.

It is not usually considered to be an economic department of the government, although here in China Daily, we run a special Energy and Environment supplement every week, after merging the two operations into one.

Having no friends in that government office, not even contacts with any related NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the world, I have to say SEPA is providing a valuable service.

Whether people agree to call today's China the factory of the world, or whatever development models economists may propose for it, people must accept: No factory in the world can be built on a dumping ground.

Do not argue with me about how to calculate the amount of waste and pollution, and how to project their growth in a given period. Do not tell me analysts do not have a shared model to quantify those things.

Some simple accounting based on an average household can be enough to reveal the dangers of a single-minded chase at low cost, and without regard to the environment.

Say an average Chinese household of two parents and one child has a yearly income of 250,000 yuan ($33,000) a year.

If, in order to make their child grow faster than the other kids, the couple keep feeding him hamburgers and French fries. In order to save daily expenses, they buy all the cheap supplies they can get from unlicensed roadside vendors - from groceries to bottled (or re-bottled) water.

In less than 10 years, they would have saved probably enough to move into a new flat. But if they continue to be obsessed about speed and low cost, they would not mind living in a highly polluted area and buying cheap household supplies, including paint and furniture.

By that time, however, the kid would be suffering from obesity and diabetes, for which the parents would have to spend 100,000 yuan a year for his treatment - from regular hospital visits to herbal prescriptions, useful or not.

Then in another 10 years, the parents would be facing huge medical bills for cancers attributable either to their unhealthy food, poor air quality or to the poisonous emissions from cheap building materials.

When life and all other key factors are considered, the family's ROI (return of investment) can only be negative. In journalists' jargon: Two generations wasted.

That is why I appreciate what SEPA is doing for China. It is telling people that they really cannot afford to wait when others say they still can.

E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/30/2007 page4)