Yu Weiguo, governor of the province, said the government should address prominent issues related to environmental protection, strengthen supervision over pollution and hold not only the violators but also environmental officials accountable for resource depletion or environmental degradation.

Last year, the province launched an environmental protection supervision system, the first of its kind in the country, to address issues relating to pollution control and emissions reduction.

Local officials' performance in supervision over environmental pollution increased from 2 percent to 10 percent in their annual evaluation, according to the system.

Since July, the provincial government has sent environmental inspection teams to Longyan, Quanzhou and Ningde. A total of 289 polluting enterprises were punished, and more than 30 executives of the companies were detained by police.

In Longyan, 17 government officials and employees of State-owned enterprises were held accountable for lax environmental efforts.

By the end of June, Fujian had dealt with 2,096 polluting enterprises and transferred 168 criminal cases to public security authorities after the revised Environmental Protection Law took effect in January last year.

Home to 12 major rivers, Fujian has also set up a water quality protection mechanism to hold deputy governors responsible since 2014. Each of the three deputy governors of the province is named chief in charge of water protection in the regions of the Minjiang, Jiulong and Aojiang rivers.

As a result, the water quality of the 12 rivers in Fujian is on the rise. In the first half of this year, the province's rivers with a water quality rating of Grade III or higher accounted for 95.1 percent of the total, 26.3 percentage points higher than the national average.

China classifies water quality into six levels, ranging from level I, which is suitable for drinking after minimal treatment, to level VI, for water that is severely contaminated.

Anxi county in southeastern Fujian serves as a perfect example of the success of the province's ecological civilization efforts.

The county, which used to be a dusty stone processing base, has become the largest e-commerce industrial center in Fujian.

In 2011, Anxi withdrew from the lucrative but highly pollutive stone processing industry and instead cooperated with Hongqiao Group to build an e-commerce industrial park.

Last year, the park generated an average daily revenue of more than 6 million yuan (about $870,000) and handled more than 100,000 packages every day.

In Nanping, another city in the province, the local government promoted the development of a number of emerging industries, including tourism and biomedicine.

The growth of the government's fiscal revenue has been ranked among the top three in the province for four consecutive years.

Dong Jidong contributed to this story.

humeidong@chinadaily.com.cn