China will adopt more efficient and targeted measures during its campaign against pollution next year, but will not relax the targets or ease the crackdown on violators, the environment ministry said in a statement on Monday night.
The push for new measures follows an annual meeting of top leaders last week which noted that the world's second-largest economy is facing downward pressures.
"We will coordinate environmental protection with economic development and ensure that violations are strictly dealt with in accordance with the law," the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) said.
The ministry urged local environmental bureaus to help companies set pollution treatment solution plans and to pay attention to reasonable appeals of companies during environmental inspections.
Beijing has ditched blanket production cuts on heavy industry as part of its anti-pollution campaign and allowed local authorities to adopt measures based on regional emission levels. However, declining air quality in the past two months in some swaths of northern China has stirred concerns that the government is easing up on enforcement.
In China's capital, the average concentration of lung-damaging particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) jumped 61 percent in November compared with the same month last year, the environment ministry said.
In a group of smog-prone 26 northern cities, PM2.5 readings rose 33 percent last month compared with November 2017 to 88 micrograms per cubic meter - more than double the stated standard of 35 micrograms.
For the first 11 months of the year, air quality in coal mining heartland Linfen, East China's Shandong Province, was the worst performance among the 169 closely monitored cities nationwide, according to the MEE. Top steelmaking hubs Tangshan and Handan, both in North China's Hebei Province, were ranked fourth- and fifth-worst, respectively.
"China's environmental protection campaign is facing multiple pressures... Some regions have weakened their recognition of the significance of the environment amid downward economic pressure and we have seen differing progress in different places," said the MEE.
The MEE has scheduled a second round of national environmental inspections in 2019, and vowed to win the war against air pollution and promote water and soil protection.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, the MEE said it has issued 166,210 notices of penalty decisions to environmental regulation violators, with fines totaling 13.6 billion yuan ($1.98 billion) in the first 11 months this year.
Legislative and administrative authorities' review of regulatory documents on record this year has been a "sharp tool" for combating pollution, said a report submitted on Monday for review at a bimonthly session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.
A total of 1,029 laws and regulations on ecological and environmental protection have been found to be inconsistent with higher-level laws, the directives of central authorities or the requirements of the times, according to the report by the legislative work committee.
