Nearly 14,000 Companies in China Violate Pollution Rules<br />By EDWARD WONGJUNE 13, 2017<br />Environmental inspectors in northern China have found<br />that nearly 14,000 companies, or 70 percent of the businesses they examined, failed to meet environmental standards for controlling air pollution, according to a state news agency report.<br />The inspectors sent out by the environmental ministry have been looking at enterprises in what is known as the Jing-Jin-Ji area, a vast urban sprawl<br />that includes the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, as well as Hebei Province.<br />The inspectors working for the Ministry of Environmental Protection came up with those results after<br />two months of work across 28 cities in northern China, said Xinhua, the state news agency.<br />The latest announcement said that of 467 enterprises inspected in one recent round, a staggering 350, or 75 percent, had<br />"environmental problems." The issues included lack of pollution control mechanisms and sewage treatment facilities.<br />But state-owned enterprises that burn coal — including those in the power, steel<br />and cement sectors — remain powerful and challenge official efforts to limit coal consumption.<br />China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has urged countries to abide by the Paris climate accord,<br />even though President Trump is withdrawing the United States, historically the largest emitter, from the accord.
