China faces acute environmental and resource strains that threaten to choke growth unless the world’s second-biggest economy cleans up, the nation’s environment minister said in an unusually blunt warning.
In an essay published yesterday, Minister of Environmental Protection Zhou Shengxian (周生賢) also said his agency wants to make assessing projected greenhouse gas emissions a part of evaluating proposed development projects.
That could give the Ministry of Environmental Protection more sway in climate change issues, an area dominated by agencies whose main interest is shoring up industrial growth.
Zhou set environmental worries at the heart of China’s next phase of economic development — a theme in focus at the country’s annual National People’s Congress session starting on Saturday.
“In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humanity and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” Zhou said in the essay published in the China Environment News, his ministry’s official newspaper.
“The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the deterioration of the environment have become serious bottlenecks constraining economic and social development,” he said.
“This is a crucial time for deciding policy, so he’s trying to bring more urgency to getting more teeth for his ministry by making people grasp the huge challenges,” said Yang Ailun (楊愛倫), the head of climate and energy for Greenpeace China, speaking of Zhou’s essay.
Zhou said prospects for growth could be threatened unless smoggy skies, polluted rivers and reckless exploitation of mine reserves are taken much more seriously in setting policy.
“If we are numb and apathetic in the face of the acute conflict between humankind and nature, and environmental management remains stuck in the old rut with no efforts in environmental technology, there will surely be a painful price to pay, and even irrecoverable losses,” Zhou said.
To counter such threats, he proposed strengthening his ministry’s ability to monitor and curb pollution, including taking a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions.
China’s greenhouse gas and climate change policy are dominated by the National Development and Reform Commission, which is also responsible for industrial growth.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS