Anyone who visited Shanghai in recent years can feel: more and more elements and tones of modern city environment are decorating the harmonious, beautiful and dynamic Shanghai!
From 2000 to 2002, the 1st round of "3-Year Action Plan" on environment protection in Shanghai concentrated itself on 5 key parts, including the water environment improvement, the air environment improvement, the solid waste handling, the vegetative coverage construction and the comprehensive environment improvement of main industry areas, to implement the comprehensive improvement of city environment.
During the past 3 years, Shanghai has kept the annual investment on environment protection above 3% of its GDP. The total investment on environment protection in the past 3 years was more than 45 billion RMB. The investment grew 10% every year, which was the highest record in the history.
The excellent environment attracted more and more people around the world to invest, tour or live in Shanghai. The world-shaking changes happened in terms of city image, investment environment and environment protection quality, marking the successful and remarkable accomplishment of the 1st round of "3-Year Action Plan" on environment protection in Shanghai.

Trans-century Strategic Decision
Each term of Shanghai Party Committee and Municipal Government paid great attention to the environment protection project. As early as Comrades Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji worked in Shanghai in the mid-80s of 20th century, the upriver source protection of Huangpu River and the urban sewage improvement were listed among the main environment projects. On Dec.30th of 1986, Comrade Jiang Zemin wrote the epigraph: "Progress actively, pave the new way to co-develop environment protection and economic construction", which showed the vision and intention of Shanghai Party Committee and Municipal Government to strengthen the environment protection.
At the 3rd session of 7th Conference in Dec. 1998, Shanghai Party Committee set the goal of "aiming at improve municipal management level, building city image of 'bluer sky, clearer water, greener land, and better living'". In the same year, the Municipal Government worked out the "Implementation Opinions of 3-year Target of Shanghai Municipal Management and Environment Construction", and fixed the 5 key tasks focusing on riverway improvement and vegetative coverage construction.
In order to bring the trans-century environment protection in Shanghai to a higher stage, Secretary of Shanghai Committee (then) Huangju released the clear directions of "Be future-oriented and be today-focused, take more powerful measures to improve the tasks of population, resource and environment in Shanghai with greater intention" and "Improve the environment quality in Shanghai as: new looks in each year, and great changes in three years".
According to the general requirement of the Party Central and Shanghai Party Committee, Shanghai Municipal Government launched the writing of "3-year Action Plan" of environment protection in April 1999. In the 2nd half of that April, Executive Vice Major (then) Chen Liangyu arranged the research work. Vice Major Han Zheng took the lead himself to organize the Construction Committee, the Environment Protection Bureau, the Plan Committee, the Agriculture Committee, the Economy Committee, the Science & Technology Committee and the related units to spend more than 3 months in completing all text of the plan in 26 topics.
On Oct.27th of 1999, the "3-year Action Plan" of environment protection and construction was passed in the Standing Committee Discussion of Shanghai Party Committee. On Sep.17th of 1999, at the working conference on strengthening the environment protection and construction, the Municipal Government issued formally the "3-year Action Plan" of environment protection and construction. Huangju wrote to the conference and stressed that it was a strategic deployment to the environment protection and construction in Shanghai in the next few years. He required in the letter that all the Shanghai people should gather their strength and work firmly to build the idea environment featured with "bluer sky, clearer water, greener land, and better living" under the long-term target of constructing the eco-city, which would build good base for Shanghai's development in the new century. At the conference, Shanghai Major (then) Xu Kuangdi stressed that it was a sole million commitment and promise to the nation, the Shanghai people and the descendant generations.
The "3-year Action Plan" of environment protection and construction showed Shanghai's decision to take the way of sustainable development.

Big Investment Results in Great Changes
The 3 years in that the "3-year Action Plan" was implemented, saw the rapid growth of investment on environment protection in Shanghai. The municipal and the district governments increased their financial support to guarantee the implementation of plan. According to the statistics, Shanghai invested up to 12.02Bn RMB in the "3-year Action Plan" in 2000, 10.84 billion RMB in 2001, and above 10 billion RMB in 2002. The financial support brought the annual growth rate of about 10% in terms of environment protection investment in the past successive years. The total investment reached up to 45 billion RMB that was the highest in the history.
In all the great changes resulted from the large investment, the change of water environment was particularly remarkable. Suzhou River, which used to be dark and stinking, was the secret anguish to the Shanghai people. Up to now, the dark and stinking phenomenon disappeared basically in the trunk stream of Suzhou River. The main indexes of water quality reached the basic standard of sightseeing water, and the riverside vegetative coverage became lush. The areas along Suzhou River turned out to the idea place for people's living, leisure and excising. On Jan.8th this year, Shanghai made formal declaration of "Formal accomplishment of the 1st term of Suzhou River renovation" publicly.
With the accomplishment of the 1st term of Suzhou River renovation, the 6 branches of Suzhou River could dam the river by 240K tons a day, which was 90K tons above the plan. After the completion of the Sewage Damming Projects of Hongkou harbor and YangShupu harbor and the Renovation Project of Hongkou harbor, the daily damming volume was 330K tons, basically eliminating the dark and stinking phenomenon at Hongkou harbor. With the accomplishment of the 1st term of Suzhou River renovation, the main indexes of water quality of the trunks and branches have reached or approached the national standard of class-5 water, and the water quality improvement in the branch riverways within the Minhang District was even better. Along with the improvement of water quality in Suzhou River, the neighboring ecosystem was also recovered synchronically. In July 2001, fish was found in the downtown section of Suzhou River for the 1st time. Up to now, over 10 kinds of fish were found including Wuli, Heji, Banghua, Maisui, Dou (Chinese pronunciations). Although there were only few kinds, they showed us the great renovation of ecosystem in Suzhou River.
Taking a glance at the current Suzhou River, you could find the fish swimming in the water, the flowers blooming along the banks, and the image of building reflected in the water. Along the riverside, the newly-built water-proximity platforms and yacht harbors provided Shanghai the new striking city waterscape.
A lot of sewage pipeline network projects were built or expanded in Shanghai, including the WuMinwai Drainage & Sewage Collection Project, the 1st term of Pudong Collection System of Term-2 Sewage Project. The 1st term of ShiDongkou Sewage Plant, the Songjiang East Sewage Plant, and the Liantang Sewage Plant were accomplished and put into operation. Two huge-size sewage plants located at Zhuyuan and Bailong harbor have been launched to construct, and several town-level sewage plants were under construction or preparation including the Songjiang Dakun Sewage Plant. The centralized collection capability and daily processing capability of urban sewage have increased by 928K cubic meters and 441K cubic meters, namely 41.3% and 43.9% respectively.
The riverways renovation in Shanghai has been gradually converted from the sole engineering of sanitation and flood-prevention to the multiple functions of ecosystem protection, water quality improvement, water carriage and sightseeing. Till the end of last year, during the fully-launched small riverways renovation project, the water service department has implemented or participated 25 cases of water environment renovation projects, renovated the riverways as long as 15000km, dismantled 890K square meters of illegal buildings, construct 4.71 million square meters of vegetative coverage along the rivers, removed 4 million tons of garbage or floaters, and introduced, drained or diverted almost 26.1 billion cubic meters of water. The stage target of "Clear water, clean bank, and vegetative coverage" has been basically reached along Huangpu River and in the trunk riverways of Shanghai. During the past 3 years, there have been 15000 rivers (sections) under renovation accumulatively, and about 100 million cubic meters of silt has been dredged up.

Poly-processing Trend of Garbage
In the 5 main sectors of "3-year Action Plan", more than 110 key projects have been successfully completed or partly accomplished with the preset stage target. The clean energy substitution project for coal consumption has been accomplished beyond the expectation; the constructions of Jiangqiao, Yuqiao garbage burning plants and other processing facilities have improved the garbage processing capability by 3390 tons per day.
Great attention has been made to urban garbage processing. About 1.4 billion RMB has been invested step by step to build the modern garbage burning plants located at Jiangqiao and Yuqiao, to which the equipment manufactured with 1990s' advanced technologies were introduced from Europe. With the equipment, the entire burning process were enclosed to prevent stinking flavor from escaping, the waste materials were properly handled, and the waste gases such as dioxin were released strictly according to the national or international standards. In this way, the garbage handling in Shanghai not only evolved from the mono-processing to poly-processing, but also entered the world best list.
Besides the accomplished burning plants located at Jiangqiao and Yuqiao, the Term-3 Expansion Project of Laogang Burying Farm and the construction of Liming Garbage Backup Burying Farm were completed, providing the daily processing capacities of 4,900 tons and 990 tons respectively; and about 249 compact compressing stations of living garage were built; the classified collection coverage of urban living garbage has reached 40.8%, and 98% of the planned collection system of rural living garbage was completed. With the launch of Comprehensive Utilization and Bio-chemical Processing Project of Cooking Garbage, 53 sets of compact bio-chemical processors were installed in hotels, restaurants and residential communities. The recycling rate of one-off plastic canteen has exceeded 60%.
Shanghai Handling Center of Solid Waste has been built to accept the dangerous wastes, which contains about 150 Mu and provides the annual burying capacity of 25,000 tons. With the best technology in the world, the dangers wastes are handled in the enclosed disturber controlled by the computer, and is then put in one of the 3 burying pools as big as over 3,000 cubic meters respectively to isolate the dangerous wastes away from the outside environment completely.
The disorder management of rural living garbage was improved. Taking Jiading District as an example, it listed the collection and processing of rural living garbage as one of the government key tasks in every year from 2000, and has invested almost 90 million RMB during the past 3 years. Currently, the 244 villages in Jiading District have been equipped with the collection and processing systems. Total 447 garbage transfer houses and 3,006 dustbins were built or rebuilt, and almost 1,000 farmhouse garbage storage barrels were located.

Green Comes to Sight as Door Opens
Ten yeas ago, Shanghai ranked the last one among all the big and middle-size cities around the nation in terms of the vegetative coverage and the public vegetative area per capita. In 2002, the public vegetative area per capita of Shanghai reached 7.2 square meters that increased by 1.4square meters from 5.6 square meters in 2001, and the vegetative coverage reached 30%.
In the recent years, 14 gardens, including the Century Garden, were built in Shanghai that increased the quantity of gardens to 125. Over 10 pieces of large-scale vegetative areas were constructed, including the Yanzhong Grassland, the Tai Pingqiao Grassland, the Xu Jiahui Garden, the Gucheng Park, the Daning Grassland, the Sichuan North Park, the Hongqiao Garden, the Changshou Grassland, the Huangxin Park, the Huashan Grassland and the Kaiqiao Grassland.
Everywhere at these vegetative areas, you can find elders playing chess or cards under the tree shades, and children frolicking on the grass. The citizens can enjoy the warm life of "Green homeland". According to the statistics, 39.88 million square meters of public vegetative areas have been built in the downtown area during the past 3 years, and each street is now allocated with a vegetative coverage with the area of 3000square meters. The target of "Green comes to sight as door opens" is reached that brings enjoyment to the citizens. Chen Feiqing, a grade-3 pupil in Tianlin No.3 Primary School let himself go to write in his composition with the sentences: "The city is in the forest; the houses are surrounded by green; and the people are accompanied by flowers…it's not the mirage at all!"
The vegetative construction in Shanghai suburbs is not any worse. Up to 2002, in the projects of suburb forest construction, 37.4 million square meters of man-made forest, 4.1 million square meters of water source maintenance forest of Huangpu River, 13.3 million square meters of seaside guard forest and 15.1 million square meters of riverway guard forest were built.
Taken Jiading District as example again, it built 21000 Mu of forest last year, which equaled the overall amount accomplished in the previous years. In 2000, the greenbelt construction along the city-circling river was launched. Up to now, the 2nd term of this project has been accomplished. The city-circling green "necklace" is basically established to be the sightseeing site to citizens.
Thousands of "green ambassador" emerged in the vegetative construction, one of which is Tang Jinming, the Party member who is retired and lives in Tianlin New Village of Xuhui District. Tang is not well off, but he has invested more than 200,000 RMB by himself to construct the vegetative coverage in the residential community. In order to save cost, he went the forest farms in Anhui and Zhejiang provinces to purchase trees and flowers against cold weather. In his trip, he sat on the rocks whenever tired and took in only the solid food and cold water. Particularly, Tang earnestly practiced what one advocated at all sides. On 5 o'clock in the morning, Tang went to take care of the vegetative area including trimming branch, eliminating worm, and supplying water. Led by Tang, the residents in the community have participated the group of "Plant green, love green, and guard green" one by one.

Industry Area Turns to Oasis
The renovation of Wusong industry park is one of the key points in the "3-year Action Plan" of environment protection. As an old industry base with 50-year history, Wusong industry area includes 182 enterprises, among which 10% of the top pollutant sources of Shanghai are covered. In 1999, the leading team of comprehensive environment renovation was founded in this industry area, and 2.73 billion RMB was funded specially for environment renovation at the same time.
During the past 3 years, 7 pollutant-releasing enterprises and 21 production lines that generated the concrete or the calcium carbide have been closed during the past 3 years, which reduced 18608 tons of smokes and powders and made the SO2 and NO2 in the air dropped by 23% and 5% respectively. During the past 3 years, 470,000 square meters of vegetative areas have been built in the whole industry area, which increased the in-plant vegetative coverage to 14%. Particularly, the No.1 Steel Company and the No.5 steel company have invested morn than 600 million RMB on environment protection during the past 3 years. To be specific, the No.1 steel company has invested over 400 million RMB to accomplish more than 60 pollution-renovation projects in different scales, which enabled the company to reduce over 2,000 tons of SO2 and over 11,000 tons of powders in each year. The powders have been reduced by 84% accumulatively.
New progress has been made to the comprehensive handling of industry pollution. There was a big piling site in Pujiang Chemical Plant of COSCO Chemical Company (Limited), in which the chrome residues were piled up. In the raining days, the dirty water flew around. Currently, it has been planted with trees and lawns after the completion of 1st case of harmless processing project of 50,000-ton chrome residue in China. In the No.5 steel plant, over 10,000 square meters of uncovered pilings were removed from where the "Special Steel Forest" with more than 80 kinds of trees are planted. The turning out from big piling site to big oasis is one of the epitomes of great changes made to Wusong industry area with the "3-year Action Plan".
The Taopu district has been converted from the chemical industry area to the metropolitan-type industry park. Shi Chunlan, who lives in Room 104, 25# of Lane 1087 of Taopu New Village, couldn't help smiling while she told the journalist: "We have lived here for several tens of years. In the past summers, we could feel the peculiar smell along with the wind and see the powders all around. Now the peculiar smell is almost gone. And we can see the green trees around the plants, making us feel the same as living by the park. Can't we be happy? We dreamed of moving away, but now we don't want to leave."

Shanghai Got Better "Face"
In the recent years, the environment air quality of Shanghai has been greatly improved. The Shanghai people are always accompanied by the blue sky and white clouds now, The sky is compared to the "face" of Shanghai. During the past 3 years, the "face" of Shanghai has become better and better.
Based on the figures provided by the environment protection inspection department, in 280 days out all the entire year 2002 the Shanghai people have enjoyed the good-quality air. Among them, 71 days have seen the environment air quality reach level-1 standard, which are 67 days more than those in 1999. And new historic record has been created with 8 successive days of level-1 environment air quality.
Figures are bald but convincible enough. The days with the air quality index of level 2 or above were much more than those in the past 3 years, namely almost 10% growth a year. The average thickness of SO2 around has dropped by 23%, from 0.044mg/ cubic meters in 1999 to 0.034mg/cubic meters now; and the average thickness of NOX has dropped by 18%, from 0.099mg/ cubic meters in 1999 to 0.081mg/cubic meters now
Professor Zhang Danian, an expert of air environment research has distinct feeling of air quality improvement. He told the journalist that he could see only 3 chimneys now instead of 37 before. In the past, he was afraid of wearing the white-colored shirt because the neckline would be sooty after only a single day, but now the time extended to 2 or 3 days. After 2000, Shanghai has increased its standard of air pollution index: replacing NOX with SO2, and replacing 0.1mg of granule with 0.01mg of inhalable granule.
The increasing of days of blue sky and white clouds are tightly close to the promotion of clean energy substitution in Shanghai. Total 2200 set of coal-burning stoves have been replaced with the clean energy in Shanghai. One "No coal district", 3 "No coal proximity district", 44 "No coal proximity street", 16 "Satisfied air environment street (town)" and 8 "Smoke controlled village" were built, with 270,000 square meters of the no coal proximity district; the natural gas conversion has been made to all the units and residents within the gas supplying range of Pudong District, and 350,000 cubic meters of natural gas were delivered to Puxi region; total 101 LPG stations and 3 CNG stations were built, 38,000 LPG taxies and 580 CNG buses were reconstructed, as well as 1,800 sets of diesel motors on buses were renewed and 3,400 sets were renovated; with the implementation progress of inspection and maintenance system of vehicle and the special road inspection of vehicle tail gas and diesel bus dark smoke, the dark smoke of diesel bus was reduced substantially; and certain achievements have been made to the management of transportation dust pollution control and straw burning.
"Great changes in 3 years" made Shanghai clean and beautiful. Yes, Shanghai is changing to be more beautiful and more attractive. The new round of "3-year Action Plan" has been spread before us: till 2005, the general environment quality of Shanghai will enter the top ranks of all the big cities in China. Shanghai will build itself the National Gardens City that is featured with clear water, clean bank and fresh air, and further build itself the international metropolis adapt to the living standards for people from China and abroad.