SEPA to Promote Opening up Information

“We will stop the un-opening principle,” said Pan Yue, deputy
director of China’s State Environmental Protection
Administration (SEPA), when he recently interviews with public
media. “SEPA is not worry about being claimed because of showing
its own deficiencies and mistakes. The regulation of Opening
Methods of Environmental Information (trail edition) is aimed
to enhance the right of public to know environment information.
Furthermore, public will acquire the right of joining in the
decision of governments on environmental policies”.
      As discussed in the Present Development Trend of the
Municipal Sewage Treatment Sector (page 21-23 this issue), water
industry is becoming the most important topic of China's
environmental protection.
     Water management and water recycling in industry are also
key themes at AchemAsia 2007, which took place from May 14th to
18th in Beijing. As the biggest international forum for the
process industry in Asia, AchemAsia 2007 highlighted the optimum
solutions. The event has drawn a total of 500 exhibitors and 20
000 attendees from all over the world. According to Dr. Christina
Hirche of Dechema, with an annual growth rate of around 15% the
Chinese market for water treatment is second only to the USA.
Moreover this development is given added impetus by the 2008
Olympic Games in Beijing and Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Siemens is
one of the global players on the Chinese water market,
particularly for industrial water treatment. With its recent
acquisition of 70% of CNC Water Technology Inc., Beijing,
Siemens is expanding its industrial water treatment business in
China.
     A report disclosed by Dechema during AchemAsia 2007 judges
that pollution is increasing even faster than the economy is
growing in China. While China has taken steps to protect the
environment, all efforts are coming to naught in view of the
country's tremendous economic growth. However, the
environmental costs are now surpassing the economic gain, which
requires the country to act not only for ecological but also
economic reasons. 22% of the world's population live in China,
having access to only 9% of the world's agriculturally usable
land, 6% of the global water resources, and 4% of the forest.
For this reason, sustainable growth is vitally important for
China. In order to prevent environmental protection measures to
be constantly outstripped by economic growth, the Chinese
government will have to create the framework for more
energy-efficient and resource-efficient economic activities
and make major improvements in the environmental
infrastructure.
     The National Development and Reform Commission recently
announced a program of developing high technology industries.
Making use of high and new technologies to improve traditional
industries including environmental protection is one of the
eight segments that should be focused. Development will be
emphasized on integrated clean production technologies for
heavy pollution industries, reducing and recycling wastes and
discharges. Companies majored in environmental protection will
enjoy the huge cake while petrochemical manufacturers will face
higher pressure.
     On May 10th and 11th, PBC (the Peoples Bank of China) issued
bills of RMB40 billion and RMB100.3 billion to recover funds from
domestic commercial banks in order to tight the credit. On May
15th, China Bank of Communications (SH: 601328) was started to
be publicly traded in Shanghai Stock market, while the
comprehensive stock index of Shanghai decreased by 3.64%.


Zhong Weike
May 16th, 2007