PM2.5 falls as China advances green goals

China has seen continued improvement in its ecological and environmental quality this year, with major indicators showing notable progress as it strives to advance the Beautiful China initiative during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on Thursday.

Addressing a State Council Information Office news conference, Huang said that from January to July, the national average concentration of PM2.5 particulate matter fell by 1.8 micrograms per cubic meter year-on-year, a decline of 6.2 percent.

The proportion of days with fairly good air quality, defined as an air quality index below 100 on a scale of 0 to 500, also rose by 3.9 percentage points from a year earlier, he said.

Water quality also improved, with the proportion of surface water rated Grade I to III reaching 86.5 percent during the period, up 2.4 percentage points year-on-year, Huang said. China uses a five-tier surface water quality system, with Grade I the best and Grade III suitable for the survival of most aquatic organisms.

Huang attributed the progress in part to the central ecological and environmental protection inspection mechanism, which he said has remained a powerful tool for uncovering major environmental problems and reinforcing accountability.

Since the system was piloted in Hebei province in late 2015, it has completed three full rounds of inspections covering all 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, according to Huang.

Over the past decade, the mechanism has addressed more than 380,000 public environmental whistleblowing complaints. To date, authorities have publicly exposed 349 typical cases and transferred 6,475 rectification tasks to inspected regions and departments, he said.

Thanks to the inspections, "the prevalence of environmental offenses that were severe in nature, serious in circumstances and markedly illegal has dropped substantially, leading to a notable rise in the public's sense of gain, happiness and security regarding the ecological environment," Huang said.

Vice-Minister Dong Baotong said at the same briefing that China will further accelerate the digital and intelligent transformation of ecological and environmental monitoring and law enforcement during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

Digital technologies and artificial intelligence have already become key drivers of environmental supervision, Dong said. Over the coming five years, greater emphasis will be placed on the twin pillars of monitoring and law enforcement.

By 2030, China aims to reduce manual participation in key business areas of the national ecological and environmental monitoring network by 70 percent and increase efficiency by more than five times, he said.

In air quality monitoring, for example, China will raise the accuracy rate of 72-hour forecasts for days when PM2.5 exceeds standards nationwide to more than 80 percent by 2030, Dong said.

On enforcement, Dong said China will build a smarter system covering the full process from problem discovery and early warning to disposal, integrating automatic pollutant-source data, satellite remote-sensing information and online leads.

Vice-Minister Li Gao highlighted significant progress in a nationwide campaign against illegal dumping and disposal of solid waste.

Since the drive began in June last year, authorities have identified more than 56,000 problems and completed rectification on more than 45,000 of them, while cleaning up and disposing of more than 60 million metric tons of solid waste, Li said.

To improve detection, the ministry has built a network combining satellite and drone surveillance, ground inspections and public reporting, with more than 60,000 potential leads collected so far, he said.

Li said China will incorporate the occurrence rate of illegal solid waste dumping and disposal into the 15th Five-Year Plan framework for building a Beautiful China, using clear and measurable indicators to strengthen local accountability and accelerate the establishment of a standing enforcement mechanism.