Battle to clean up soil

CONTAMINATED SOIL IS SAID TO BE EVEN harder to restore to health than polluted water. And it is a horrible fact that the majority of people have long been kept in the dark about the degree to which China's soil has been polluted.

But the Ministry of Land and Resources finally bit the bullet on Thursday and announced the findings from a soil survey conducted from April 2005 to December 2012. Of the 6.3 million square kilometers of soil that was surveyed, 16.1 percent has been polluted to different degrees, and the percentage of the polluted arable land surveyed was 19.4 percent.

This announcement is a sign that the government is ready to face up to the situation and realizes that a plan and timetable for its implementation are needed to stop the pollution from deteriorating further and to rehabilitate the polluted soil.