Named "green illumination," the programme recommends cities introduce power-efficient bulbs in public areas to replace traditional neon and road lamps. It also sets standards to limit the brightness of public lighting.

The ministry has experimented with the plan in eight cities, including Shanghai, and plans to introduce it nationwide. The target is to reduce the power consumption for urban lighting by 15 per cent by 2008.

The plan is a timely answer to the desperate power shortages haunting the entire country.

Many factories have had to slacken output this year, and big cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou have restricted the use of neon, as the industrial boom and urbanization are outrunning the current yield of power plants.

The so-called "green illumination" is a good move that strikes a balance between the brilliance of city nights and the limits of a stressed power grid.

But its real value - rather than simply saving electricity - is to correct many city planners' obsession with grandeur without thought to wasted resources.

Swell-headed with their growing economic might, many cities crave bigness, wanting things like large and cool landscape lights, among other examples, to showcase their achievements. Economic and environmental concerns, however, have taken a back seat in many cases.

Urban public lighting now consumes 5 per cent of China's overall electrical output, four times the proportion of that in 1998. Some lighting facilities, as experts found, have created "optical pollution."

In a country with a huge population but scant resources, such extravagant use of energy merits reconsideration.

"Green illumination" manifests the country's understanding of the worsening conflicts between human desire and the environment, and a will to compromise for a sustainable future.

Many sectors should learn from the new move and review the old ways of creating prosperity by plundering nature.

We should hope that "green illumination" will not only light up city nightscapes but also enlighten citizens' minds and become a test case for economy-based prosperity.