Most multinationals that breached China's environmental rules have corrected their failings, said a spokesman with the country's environment watchdog on Wednesday.

State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) found in an nationwide inspection that none of the 130 multinationals with a history of breaching environmental regulations in the past four years had continue with their violations, said SEPA spokesman Tao Detian.

But SEPA did discover that three of them had engaged in new violation activities. It found CG-Omnova Decorative Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd and Jinmailang Corporation in Chengdu had discharged an excessive amount of pollutants and another Shanghai-based company, Shanghai COSCO Kawasaki Heavy Industries Steel Structure Co., Ltd, were guilty of noise pollution.

Multinational companies have to shoulder the same environmental responsibilities as domestic ones, said Tao, who also called on the companies to step up the building of inner mechanisms on environmental management.

Ninety multinational companies were put on a list of industrial polluters published in August, 2007, by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based Chinese non-government organization.

Among them were international big names such as Pepsi, 3M, Nescafe, Yamaha and Samsung, as well as KFC and Pizza Hut.

Half of these international companies are located in Shanghai, China's largest industrial city and financial hub, and the others are operating in 18 other Chinese provinces and municipalities.

Some of these firms have even become major polluters in their host cities. For instance, a Carlsberg beer brewery was shut down by the city government of Tianshui, in northwest China's Gansu Province, for its severe pollution of local rivers.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2008)