Cleanup efforts missing, inspectors discover

More than 4,300 officials have been held accountable for environmental violations in 10 provincial regions after the areas were revisited by environmental inspectors dispatched by the central government to see if problems previously found had been rectified, China's top environmental watchdog said on Monday.

The inspections, launched in early 2016 and headed by ministerial level officials, had covered all 31 provincial regions on the Chinese mainland as of the end of last year.

At the end of May, the authorities dispatched six teams to revisit 10 of the regions, including Hebei, Henan, Jiangxi and Yunnan provinces. The main task of the teams was to follow up on corrective measures that had been required previously. All the teams completed their work on Saturday, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said.