China names and shames most polluted cities
Date: 16-Jul-04
Country: BEIJING
The northern coal-mining province of Shanxi stood out, with three cities taking the top three slots on the list - Linfen, Yangquan and Datong, state media said yesterday.
"These cities must step up efforts to improve air quality," Wang Jirong, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
The goal for Beijing, where the skies are known to turn yellow on occasion from construction dust, industrial waste and car fumes, is to have 80 per cent of "fairly good or excellent air-quality days" a year by 2008, up from the current 60 percent.
"The situation is unlikely to improve drastically," Xinhua news agency said.
The top three environmentally friendly cities were Haikou, in southern Hainan province, Zhuhai, in southern Guangdong, and Zhanjiang, also in Guangdong.
