Dissents aside, our cartoonist Wang Zheng hit the nail on the head in a September issue of China Daily.

I'm talking about his masterpiece (as it seemed to me) on environmental damage. For those who may have forgotten what it was, here's a recap: An overweight official, holding a brush dripping with black paint in his right hand, tells a higher authority, "Sir, we've reduced power use by 50 per cent." The tube-light above tells us why the dripping brush - it had been used to paint half of the fluorescent lamp black.

The logic is simple: bury your head in the ground like an ostrich and pretend that the world doesn't see you, when actually it's you who can't see the world.

Almost one-third of China gets acid rain, thanks to all the sulphur dioxide and coal combustion we produce. But why should we be bothered? Industrial boilers and furnaces consume almost half of China's coal. And coal is still our major source of fuel.

The central government has tried, rightly and in earnest, to reduce pollution. But, unfortunately, we have not responded in the way that we (including many officials) should have.

We must accept the fact that development and the environment have now come face to face, though it is something we all hoped would never happen.

China still accounts for 13 per cent of the world's carbon emissions - behind only the United States, which accounts for 24 per cent.

Unbridled development can wreak havoc on the environment, and we all know it. The government has done everything possible to ensure that this not be the case. But are we concerned?

Haven't pollutant discharges increased? Zhou Shengxian, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, said recently that the amount of pollution has risen in 17 of our provinces, contrary to the administration's goal of cutting emissions by 2 per cent by the end of the year.

Why this sorry state of affairs? "Fraud is evident in project approval, with many projects passing their environmental assessments without fulfilling the necessary criteria," Zhou said. "It's clear the conflict between economic and environmental growth is coming to a head."

In some counties, as few as three projects out of 10 were checked for pollution control compliance before getting construction licences, Zhou said. What's worse is that almost 50 per cent of these firms have failed in their efforts to control emissions.

The environmental chief has blamed ecological approvals and patchy installation of control equipment for the rise in pollution. Government efforts to cut sulphur dioxide and other pollutants poisoning our skies have partly failed, even though the administration is determined to enforce limits on industrial pollution.

One way of doing that is by reining in the runaway economy. The property market has slowed down, for example, thanks to the government's stringent control measures.

But many other sectors have not shown any signs of doing so. The regional and provincial one-upmanship in economic development can be blamed for that.

One example is the unauthorized 2.9-billion-yuan (US$366 million) investment in Inner Mongolia's Xinfeng Power Plant. The State Council, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, ordered the autonomous region's governor and two vice-governors to hand in written self-criticisms in August.

Premier Wen is serious. Earlier this year, he said environmental pollution had become a major problem in China's development and had not been addressed well. We met most of the targets for the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05), except that for the environment, he said.

China should not follow the old path of pollution first and treatment later, the premier said. "We should leave green mountains and clear water for our offspring."

Email: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk

(China Daily 10/20/2006 page4)