Commending the Government's Work -- Beijing Review

The Fifth Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC) opened on March 5, with Premier Wen Jiabao delivering the government work report that summarized the work done in 2011 and illustrated the work to be done in 2012

Zhong Nanshan

NPC deputy, a health expert from Guangdong Province

Premier Wen's report spends many paragraphs illustrating the necessity to conserve energy, reduce emissions and protect the ecological environment, and puts air quality monitoring and pollution control on top of the agenda. It clarifies to start monitoring fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and other key areas, as well as in municipalities directly under the Central Government and provincial capital cities, and states that the practice will be extended to all cities at and above the prefecture level by 2015. This is inspiring.

Air pollution is a problem facing the whole country and every person, and even the whole world, and we cannot expect the problem to be resolved simply by relying on a certain region. Therefore I suggest carrying out monitoring throughout the country so as to timely discover problems and solve them. The monitoring should cover all the country starting from this year instead of in 2015, and prevention and control measures can be first implemented in some key regions. Real basic data should be obtained through monitoring to facilitate formulation of measures for conserving energy, reducing emissions and improving the ecological environment. We should not seek economic development at the expense of the ecological environment and our people's health.