Development should not conflict with environment

Almost all reports on smoggy air in China recently arrive at a basic judgment that China's environmental capacity is becoming weaker and weaker and the influence of environmental pollution on people's lives and health has reached an unbearable level. This is a big problem that deserves attention from the government, says an article in China Business News. Excerpts:

The Chinese people have suddenly realized that the distant images of London as a city of fog are not actually that far from their own lives.

There are three definite points to be made here. First, the pollution has come about with China's development. Second, it takes time to address the problem with systematic solutions. Third, Chinese should be confident with the objective of building a beautiful China.

China has experienced huge environmental costs to become the world's second largest economy. China has now come to a bottleneck in its development and has to transform its economic growth model. If not, all previous achievements may be wasted and the previous development will become meaningless.

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang stressed the government must do something to handle the air pollution. But people should be prepared for the fact that it takes longer to clean the air than pollute it.

China must pay attention to balanced development and take environmental costs into consideration while evaluating its economic growth and local government officials' performance.

Development, if sustainable, does not conflict with the environment. If China finds the two conflict with each other, it should transform its development but not sacrifice the environment for development.