Increased smog: CASS

China's top negotiator at international climate talks admitted that China is faced with serious air pollution and promised to take measures to improve air quality in the next five to 10 years.

"China is indeed suffering from severe air pollution," said Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.

He said that smoggy conditions have "now become the norm, which has severely affected the mental and physical health of the Chinese people," but he voiced hope for improvement over the next decade.

The Annual Report on Action to Address Climate Change 2013, which was released Monday by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that China has seen smog with increasing frequency and duration over the past 50 years.

The report noted that the number of smoggy days have increased, particularly in the Yangtze River Delta, a key economic region encompassing Shanghai, as well as in southern Guangdong's Pearl River Delta, which is adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao.

The report also claimed that smoggy days could cast a negative impact on people's health, including changing the lung functions, influencing people's reproductive abilities and harming people's immune system, according to news portal people.com.cn.

Xie attributed China's air problems to the country's "obsolete development model," its "unreasonable industrial and energy structure" and discharge of pollutants by some companies "in a very extensive way." The root cause, he added, is the "use of fossil fuels."

Pollution is becoming a major source of public anger in China, and the authorities vowed in September to reduce levels of pollutants in Beijing and other major cities by as much as 25 percent by 2017 to try to improve air quality.

Also on Tuesday, Ministry of Environmental Protection issued a notice, urging provincial government to control the use of coal in the winter to curb air pollution.

Kindergartens, primary and high schools will close, and some industrial plants will shut down when an air pollution alert is issued, said the notice.