China drawing up new plan for 2018-2020 to crackdown on smog

The Environment Ministry said officials were working on 'a three-year battle plan in the war to protect blue skies', involving tighter regulations for major industrial regions

By: Reuters | Beijing | Published: January 31, 2018 11:07 am

Smog shrouds Pudong in Shanghai. (Source: Reuters)

China is drawing up plans to extend curbs on smog over the 2018-2020 period, an environment ministry official said on Wednesday, after a five-year crackdown on pollution helped it meet its air quality targets last month.

Liu Youbin, a spokesman at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said officials were working on “a three-year battle plan in the war to protect blue skies”, involving tighter regulations for major industrial regions like Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas. The new three-year plan was expected to be completed in the first half of this year, Liu told reporters after a formal briefing. “It will continue to make Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei its key focus but it will also focus on other major regions like the Yangtze river delta, the northeast and Chengdu-Chongqing,” he added.