She said, “Despite the facts that Premier Zhu spoke of in the government work report, I think there is still a problem to be faced. The pollution that existed in the past may be under control but what is being newly-created is not being dealt with and may lead to serious consequences.”

“If we take Beijing for example, hundreds of cars are being sold there everyday which, showing encouraging economic signs though, is very worrying from the perspective of creating greater amounts of pollution,” Hu remarked, before talking about “greening” the industry.

“It concerns various levels. In the auto industry, it is impossible at the moment to produce combustion engines without any pollution. Automobiles made by Toyota for example can be made with little or no pollution while driving still creates it, and the disposal of scrapped cars is still causing pollution,” Hu said.

“Cars produced with alternative energy sources would be ideal,” she said, “But we haven’t found any measures to solve this production problem yet; efficiently controlling the pollution. Shanghai has come up with an idea and that is to restrict license production and encourage electrical bicycle production. The exact opposite happens in Beijing where license production for electric bicycles is completely restricted and car production is encouraged.”

“Of course, it is more important now to expand consumption than expand investment but we should also consider the consequences on the environment,” she said.

Finally, Hu cited countries in north Europe as an example. These countries do not encourage people to drive cars. They raise car tax and increase petrol prices to achieve this. “To protect the environment greater efforts must be made to encourage and educate the public,” she said.

(China.org.cn by Staff Reporter Dai Fan, translated by Li Xiao, March 18, 2003)