Shanghai is?seeking?to become?one of the first cities in China to adopt a stricter air quality monitoring system before it is introduced nationwide in 2016, the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau said?Thursday.

File photo of Shanghai

It was in the process of completing PM2.5 monitoring facilities across the city and would?include a PM2.5 index in its forecasts before 2016, the city's enviromental watchdog said.??

Shanghai has started to establish testing PM2.5 monitoring sites since 2000.

Currently the city has already set up 24 PM2.5 monitoring?sites?and has acquired the PM2.5 monitoring capacity, said?Fu Qingyan, senior engineer at the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center.

"Most of the sensors are still in the testing phase during the year and we have not yet got systematic data of PM2.5," Fu said.

Chinese cities currently adopt the less sensitive PM10 standard. And the result is that the official information about air quality?is often at odds with people's experience.

The nation's air quality standard, which was launched in 1982 and amended in 2000, hasn't changed since then.

Meanwhile, air quality in many of China's cities has seen a marked decline.

In recent months haze and fog across the country has?turned into a hot?public debate.?

A Ministry of Environmental Protection survey found that?most of responders?hoped to see?the introduction of the stricter PM2.5 standard.

The ministry is encouraging cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and those in the Yangtze Delta and Zhujiang Delta regions to adopt the new standard first.?