Over 3,500 people in the southern city of Guangzhou swam across the Pearl River, the third longest in China, on Wednesday afternoon, to show to the public that the once polluted river has turned clean.

However, some of the swimmers said that the water is still muddy. "Under the water, I could not see things 0.5 meter in front of me. And my eyes were uncomfortable," said a swimmer whose surname is Fan.

The unusual and bold activity is organized by the municipal government of Guangzhou, capital of the southern province of Guangdong. "We come here not for swimming," said Zhang Guangning, mayor of Guangzhou. "We hope the activity will make the local residents become aware of the importance of pollution control."

The 2,200-kilometer-long river is 400-700 meters wide as it runs through Guangzhou.

The latest mass crossing of the Pearl River was in the 1970s but for the past 30 years, it has been impossible for a large group of people to swim across it due to heavy pollution.

Huang Huahua, provincial governor of Guangdong, who also joined the mass swimming, told Xinhua News Agency that he believed that the water is no longer thick and smelly. "Although there is still a long way to go to make it completely clean, we are confident that the water quality will become better and better," Huang said.

The province has poured huge money over recent years to harness the polluted river. The massive swimming is eyed as a campaign to show the government's achievements.

Local people used to fetch drinking water directly from the river, however, the accelerating industrialization in the Pearl River Delta in south China since the late 1970s resulted in serious pollution alongside rapid economic growth.

As factories discharged more and more waste water into the river, water began to smell badly, and fishes could not live in the river in the late 1990s.

"I often went swimming in the river when I was a child," recalled Liu Youhong, a Guangzhou-based environmentalist. "The water became so smelly that nobody dared to swim there and people even covered their noses when walking nearby," the 65-year-old man said.

The Pearl River was not the only river in China to suffered from severe pollution. "More than 70 percent of the country's rivers and lakes are polluted to a varying degree," Liu said.

More than 300 million rural residents in China still lack access to clean water.

To improve the situation, Guangzhou has spent 8 billion yuan (about US$1 billion) in building sewage treatment centers over the past three years. Meanwhile, 2.5 billion yuan (US$31.25 million) was poured in to prevent water pollution.

In order to reduce pollution from industrial waste water, the city has closed or moved 147 enterprises near the Pearl River since the late 1990's. Thanks to the effort, the volume of the city's industrial wastewater has decreased from 250 million tons in 2001 to 197 million tons in 2005.

"We will invest another 18 billion yuan (about US$2.24 billion) to curb water pollution in the next five years," said Zhang.

the Chinese government unveiled a plan in Feb. 2006 to combat degradation of the country's environment for the next 15 years, with pollution control high on the agenda.

To achieve the goals, the central government has outlined seven major tasks for environmental protection, with five focusing on pollution control.

(Xinhua News Agency July 13, 2006)