Imported electronic trash has been widely spread around China, causing severe environmental problems.

About 80 percent of the world's electronic rubbish, particularly old and useless computers, are imported to Asia every year, 90 percent of which were imported to China, according to a report in Sunday's Beijing Morning Post.

Originally, only south China's Guangdong Province was seriously threatened by imported electronic trash, while today, dozens of the country's provinces and municipalities, including Hunan, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Tianjin, Fujian and Shandong are all affected by electronic rubbish.

Chinese authorities have listed Guangdong Province's towns of Guiyu, Longtang and Dali, and Taizhou Region of east China's Zhejiang Province, Huanghua City of north China's Hebei Province as well as some areas in Hunan and Jiangxi Provinces, as the country's major collection and distribution centers for electronic trash.

Lai Yun, a program director of one of the country's green peace organizations, who visited Guiyu town of Guangdong Province 10 times last year, said about 80 percent of local children, as well as some local migrant workers suffered respiratory diseases and skin diseases, due to pollution from the electronic trash.

And she believed that what she saw in Guiyu was just "the tip of the iceberg" in China.

Nowadays, some Western developed countries still allow the export of electronic trash. Therefore, most of their computer production enterprises still do not care about retrieving used computers.

At the same time, optimistic signs have also emerged. The EU has drafted laws to require its computer producers to take the retrieval of used computers into consideration when evaluating production cost. And all computer producers must promise not to use any environmentally hazardous material in the production process.

China is also preparing to draft relevant laws to regulate the country's electronic rubbish retrieval and recycling system to make clear that it is the computer producer's duty to retrieve and deal with used electronic products.

(Xinhua News Agency November 30, 2003)