Ma Jun (center) evaluating pollution reduction at a factory.

If you click on the map, you'll find that first-grade water – relatively clean and less-polluted surface water – represents only 40 percent of the nation's total water resource. Pollution is serious in the Yangtze River estuary, the Hangzhou Bay and the Pearl River estuary, especially in the coastal areas because 80 percent of outlets into the sea do not meet discharge standards. The most serious cases of pollution exist in those river sections marked in red and black on the map. Black signifies the water there has lost its use value, and the prevalence of such conditions presents a disturbing sight.

In 2006, Ma was listed by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people, along with State Council Premier Wen Jiabao, Taiwanese director Ang Lee and other Chinese political and cultural celebrities. "It's safe to say that if you put Ma Jun's face on a billboard in Beijing next to basketball star Yao Ming or screen beauty Zhang Ziyi, your average passerby wouldn't have a clue who Ma is. But those who know might argue that China needs heroes like him much more urgently than it does a sports giant or a movie star," said the Time article about Ma. In fact, it is not only China, but the whole world that needs heroes like him who pledged to fight against a deteriorating global environment.

In 2007, a year after the water pollution map was released, Ma came out with the air pollution map. This interactive e-map has information on air quality and air pollutant discharge of 15 provinces on China's mainland and Hong Kong. What drew even more public attention was that it provided a list of over 4,500 businesses that failed to meet discharge requirements – including internationally renowned corporations such as the China Petrochemical Corporation, China National Petroleum Corporation, China Guodian Group, China Huadian Group, China Huaneng Group, Shandong Luneng Group, BASF China, the Michelin Group, Asia Pulp & Paper, and Hyosung Spandex (Guangdong), among others.

The front page of the China Air Pollution map has a link to a map of China, which provides access to provincial maps and then further to administrative maps of prefecture-level cities. These maps offer air quality information from different provinces and cities, enabling the public to make comparisons of air pollution in different locations, with clearer and more extensive information on air quality in certain provinces or across the country. Through this public database, the average user has access to the corresponding pages of more than 300 prefecture-level cities in 31 administrative regions at the province level, where they can check information on local water quality, pollutant discharge and polluting sources, including information on high-polluting enterprises and sewage treatment plants.

By the end of June 2010, the Beijing Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs had logged over 49,000 entries on instances of corporate pollution since its first release of the water pollution map in 2006. For the air pollution map the number was 18,000, in which domestic companies make up the greater part. Yet many foreign-funded enterprises are also listed, including well-known multinationals.