Pursue cleaner growth

The long-anticipated fall of two key measures of pollution in the first three quarters this year has somewhat made China's double-digit economic growth relatively cleaner than it was last year.

Yet, to fulfill its environmental goal for sustainable development, the country needs to better integrate environmental policies with economic measures that go with the grain of the market system.

Latest data from the country's environmental watchdog show that in the first nine months, emissions of both sulfur dioxide, a major air pollutant, and chemical oxygen demand, a key water pollution index, dropped respectively by 1.81 percent and 0.28 percent year on year.