Chinese officials waste half their environmental budget

Close to half the money budgeted for protecting the environment is being wasted by Chinese officials on vanity projects, according to a senior government official.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai Published: 11:54AM GMT 15 Nov 2009
China has poured billions into cleaning up its often toxic landscape and is set to invest 1.4 trillion yuan (£140 billion) next year on environmental protection. However, Wang Jinnan, the deputy director of the Academy For Environmental Planning, said that "more than 40 per cent" of the money will end up being wasted by Communist party cadres on extravagant follies to boost their personal prestige.
"How much of the money is used to clean up the pollution and improve the environment?" asked Mr Wang in the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist party.
Some of the projects approved by officials in recent years include large recreational squares and lawns, and even golf courses alongside polluted rivers that were supposed to be cleaned up.
The latest report from China's National Audit Office revealed that China's six most polluted lakes and rivers remain heavily contaminated, in spite of the fact that 91 billion yuan was allegedly spent on cleaning them up between 2001 and 2007. The report said that 11 of the 13 provinces involved in the programme either misused the funds or faked spending.
Along the Pearl River, which flows through the southern province of Guangdong, more than 40 per cent of people have felt sick this year because of heavy pollution, according to a government survey.
Guangdong, which has a population the size of Germany's, is the centre of China's manufacturing industry, and has been heavily polluted for years. The Guangdong provincial social research and study centre, which conducted the survey, said the number of lung cancer patients in the past decade has doubled, and is seven times the number at the end of the 1970s.
The government said on Saturday that it had rejected requests to build new industrial projects worth almost 200 billion yuan, and will close some heavily-polluting factories.