Will environmental protection costs necessarily slash the profits of a business and then deprive it of competitiveness?

A joint program of the European Union (EU) and China has helped answer this question and provided a good example for Chinese to establish clean and profitable businesses, said Liao Hong, a coordinator of industrial program under the Sino-European Environmental Management Cooperation Program (EMCP).

The program, which started in early 2003, is one of the EU's most heavily-invested environment programs in China. It transferred environmental management skills and technologies to businesses in four industrial parks in four cities, namely Shanghai, Tianjin, Rizhao in the eastern Shandong Province and Luzhou in the Southwest Sichuan Province.

According to Liao, the program first helped introduce clean technologies and production processes to the target businesses, and then trained business leaders and local officials in environment management skills.

"We invited to the program European CEOs whose businesses are both commercially and environmentally successful. They told their Chinese peers solutions to various practical problems and encouraged them to move on in this way," said Liao.

"Training leaders is as important with technology updates, if not more, " Liao said, adding Chinese businesses can learn from European experiences to avoid the "clean after pollution" model and pursue sustainable development.
 
(Xinhua News Agency March 24, 2004)