Fujian province's development plan will focus on balancing economic growth with environmental protection, said Yu Weiguo, deputy secretary of the province's Party committee, at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on Oct 21.

Yu reported that Fujian had continued its rapid economic growth in recent years, achieving an average annual GDP growth rate of 9.6 percent during the years 2013 to 2016, which is 2.4 percentage points higher than the national average.

This means that Fujian’s GDP rose to an estimated 3.1 trillion yuan ($467 billion) in 2016 from 1.97 trillion yuan in 2012. This steep rise in economic output has led to a large increase in energy consumption and pollution being produced, which threatens to put the local environment under further pressure.

Confronted with this environmental challenge, Fujian redoubled its efforts in energy efficiency, lowering consumption and reducing the discharge of pollutants.

The rate of energy consumption in Fujian declined 18.1 percent between 2012 and 2016, and the volume of discharge of four main pollutants—namely, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen—per unit of production has dropped to half the national average.

Fujian has also been accelerating the construction of a national ecological experimental area to investigate new ways to protect the region's natural environment.

In the process, Fujian is innovating management mechanisms, establishing a target-oriented responsibility system for government officials, implementing a trading system for discharging waste and carbon emissions, and setting up a compensation mechanism for river basin regions.