MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Fourteen provinces have been added to the list of regions subject to central government inspection, Liu Changgen said as cited by China Daily on Friday.
China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection will have the power to send inspection teams to various parts of the country and discuss environmental issues with provincial leaders, according to China Daily.
Liu said that over 120 specialists will be sent randomly to targeted areas in all of China’s provinces every two years.
China remains the world's largest source of carbon emissions and air pollution, with air quality in major cities far below international standards. According to a recent survey conducted by physicists from the University of California, 1.6 million people in China die annually from diseases related to air pollution, meaning that air pollution kills on average about 4,000 people in the country each day.
Beijing officials have announced plans of spending the equivalent of $2.5 billion in 2016 to tackle environmental pollution.
