China's top legislator on Friday called on the media to increase
supervision over energy consumption and pollutant emissions to
assist the authorities' efforts to control pollution.
Wu Bangguo, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political
Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, said the
media should play a role in arousing the public's awareness of
energy-saving and exposing problems and irregularities.
Wu was speaking to journalists from the state media who are
expected to report on a nationwide environmental protection
supervision tour.
The top legislator urged "in-depth reports" on the issues that
most concern the public and ones that receive the most
complaints.
The annual media supervision campaign, dubbed the All-China
Environmental Protection Century Tour, was first launched in 1993
with participants from 28 media including the People's
Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television.
Between 2003 and 2006, the campaign organized nearly 300
journalists to tour around the country. About 1,200 new reports
were filed.
The campaign sets a different theme for every year and will, for
2007, focus on reducing energy consumption and pollutant emissions,
the targets that the central government admitted they failed to
meet in the past year.
In the government work report delivered at last year's annual
parliamentary full session, Premier Wen Jiabao said the goal of
cutting energy consumption per unit GDP by 20 percent in the
five-year period from 2006 to 2010. The goal for 2006 was four
percent.
However, in March, the National Bureau of Statistics reported
China's per unit GDP energy consumption fell 1.23 percent in
2006.
Despite the failure, Wen said the "serious" five-year target of
energy consumption reduction will not be changed, and the
government will try every means to reach the goal.
Slow industrial restructuring and over-heated growth of the
heavy industry, especially the highly energy-consuming and
polluting sectors, were to blame, according to experts and
government officials.
Lots of outdated production facilities are still in operation.
Meanwhile, some local governments and companies failed to strictly
comply with laws, regulations and standards on energy saving and
environmental protection, they said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2007)
