Nation's air quality improvement quickest in world

China's air quality has witnessed the quickest improvement in the past decade globally, and more than 90 percent of Chinese people are satisfied with the country's environment, said Sun Jinlong, Party chief of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The average concentration of PM 2.5 in major cities has dropped by 57 percent and the number of heavily polluted days has been slashed by 93 percent, he said at a conference to study Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization held in Changsha, Hunan province on Thursday.

It's the embodiment and essence of the Party's building of an ecological civilization, said Sun, who is also the deputy minister of ecology and environment.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, China's ecological civilization has experienced historic, transformational and all-round changes, he said. Moreover, 87.9 percent of the surface water is of good quality, and black and odorous water bodies in cities have been basically eliminated, he added.

In the past decade, China has achieved more than 6 percent annual GDP growth, while energy consumption has increased by only 3 percent annually, he said.

Shen Xiaoming, Party secretary of Hunan province, said the average concentration of PM 2.5 in the province has dropped by 26 percentage points from 2017 to 2022, and all of the drinking water in its all cities have met the standards.

Hunan is located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and 96 percent of its land belongs to the river basin, he said.

The province has made concerted efforts in fighting pollution and implementing the fishing ban along the Yangtze River basin, while also improving and restoring the environment of Dongting Lake, the second largest freshwater lake in China, Shen said.