As many as 96.5 percent of the public said that China should inject more investment into environmental protection during the 11th Five-Year Plan Period (2006-10), according to the nation's first and largest survey conducted by the All-China Environment Federation between December 2004 and June 2005.
Investment in environmental protection made up 1.3 percent of the total gross domestic product during the 10th Five-year Plan Period (2001-05), and 24.7 percent of the survey's participants pointed out that the investment should be increased.
Among the elicited 2,336 expert respondents, 95 percent of them said the ratio should be lifted above 1.5 percent and 69 percent of them said that by the end of 2010, another 0.4-0.7 percent investment should be added.
According to 78 percent of the experts' opinions, infrastructure in urban environments should adopt corporate marketing operations, especially in the establishment of sewage-treatment factories, and rubbish-treatment facilities.
They urged that fund-raising channels should be diversified, breaking the bottleneck that currently burdens the government in this area.
A total of 68.4 percent of local governments pointed out that some local governments have not paid enough attention to environmental protection and 60 percent of the surveyed public shared similar opinions with the experts, owing the problems to a shortage of funds.
To settle the headaches, the respondents proposed that tougher taxation and punishments should be implemented in the next five years.
As many as 98.9 percent of the public said that the nation should begin to collect environmental protection taxes and among them, 37.8 percent said every citizen in the nation should pay the tax, while 36.8 percent said that energy-consumers should pay.
In addition, 24.4 percent of the public said that those who destroy resources should pay the tax and 90.7 percent of the public said the electronic rubbish creators should be fined.
In the urban environmental protection fields, 92 percent of experts said that city dwellers should take on rubbish treatment fees such as household waste, sewage and auto emissions.
A total of 50 percent of experts proposed exact amounts that city dwellers should pay, saying 25 percent of related fees should be paid by them.
(China Daily October 10, 2005)
