China's environment is in critical condition, especially its water and air quality, Li Ganjie, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection, said on June 4.

Li told a press conference that although China's environment has improved in general, the water quality is "not optimistic" and air quality in cities is "critical."

In China's 10 most important river basins, about 9 percent of the water was class-V in 2013, the lowest level. Compared to 2012, the percentage of class-V water quality dropped by only 1.2 percentage points. Of 4,778 monitoring sites for groundwater, almost 60 percent reported their water to be poor or extremely poor.

Water quality offshore is not good either, with 18.6 percent of offshore water areas only reaching class IV. Water quality in the East China Sea and in four of China's nine biggest bays was reported to be extremely poor.

As for air quality in cities, only three of the 74 monitored cities met the national standard for good air in 2013.

Soil pollution and land degradation are also serious, according to Li, who added that agricultural acreage was reduced by 80,200 hectares in 2013, and a total of 295 million hectares, or 30.7 percent of China's land area, also suffered from soil erosion.