The State Environment Protection Administration (SEPA) recently published a harshly-worded article underscoring the growing tensions between the country's rapid economic growth and its environmental protection.

As part of a series of articles issued by key government departments to review China's economic progress in the first half of this year, the national environmental watchdog's remarks may sound  unpleasant to many local officials. High growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and low inflation have made it easy for some local governments to stick to their extensive growth patterns.

However, given the ecological damage and increasing pollution in many parts of China, such a warning is timely.

To rein in excessive investment growth in the short term and improve China's environmental conditions in the long run, the SEPA should not only keep the environment alert on but also make it deafening.

Though the central government aims to cut the country's overall energy intensity by 4 per cent this year, a 10.9 per cent growth largely fuelled by extensive investment growth has pushed up energy consumption per unit of GDP by 0.8 per cent in the first six months of the year.

As a result, decreased energy efficiency has led to a rise in emissions of major pollutants. Statistics indicate that the country's discharge of chemical oxygen demand (COD), a typical indicator used to measure water pollution, increased by 4.2 per cent in the first six months of the year. Sulphur dioxide, an air pollutant mainly generated from coal burning, rose 5.8 per cent over the same period.

These increases mark a setback for the country's environmental protection. Policy-makers at all levels must take these changes seriously right now if the country is to meet its environmental goals.

China plans to cut both COD and sulphur dioxide emissions by 10 per cent during the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-10). The Chinese Government has made this a compulsory target.

Nonetheless, the country's performance on environmental protection has been far eclipsed by its robust economic growth.

Last week, the SEPA announced that China became the world largest discharger of sulphur dioxide in 2005. It will only become more difficult to reduce such emissions as energy-consuming and pollutant-heavy projects constructed over the past decade go into operation.

The fact that emissions of COD are rebounding after the country managed to cut them by 7.35 per cent between 2000 and 2004 should also raise the alarm.

The cost of serious pollution is heavy. Initial estimates put the economic losses caused by each ton discharged at 20,000 yuan (US$2,500). In other words, China may have suffered a total loss of 509.8 billion yuan (US$63.7 billion) in 2005, more than a quarter of the country's GDP.

Yet, there are more worrying human consequences, which raise questions about the sustainability of the national economy. Heavy pollution will threaten the public's health and suffocate the country's future economic growth.

In this sense, the national environmental watchdog should further raise the alert level.