(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-11-24 09:53

China has designed a system to monitor nationwide efforts to conserve energy and reduce emissions, as the world's fourth largest economy starts to reflect upon the cost of its double-digit growth.

Local authorities will have to follow rules that will guide and measure efforts toward meeting national energy and pollution targets set for 2010, according to a government circular released Friday.

Those who do not meet the targets could be exempted from promotion, as progress in environmental protection will be a key standard by which officials and heads of state-owned enterprises are judged, it said.

Although China aims to cut energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan (US$1,298) of GDP by 20 percent by 2010, with emissions to drop 10 percent, the targets for 2006 and the first half of this year were missed by most provinces.

China is consuming its natural resources at a pace even faster than its blistering economic growth. To produce 5.5 percent of the world's GDP last year, China burned through 15 percent of the world's coal consumption, and it used 30 percent of the world's steel and 54 percent of the cement.

Desertified land in China totals 1.74 million square kilometers, one fifth of its territory, or more than seven times the area of Britain, threatening the living of 400 million Chinese.

"We are paying too much for our development," said the National Development and Reform Commission head Ma Kai, who expressed concern that China was losing its green trees and clean air to the furnaces that fuel the economic boom.

By setting mandatory targets for officials, China is trying to lay the foundation for the "scientific concept of development" proposed by the central leadership.

The concept advocates that the country put greater emphasis on protection of the environment and the interests of the poor, even as it tries to maintain fast economic growth.