CHINA HAS caught up with the US in greenhouse gas emissions and the level is not likely to fall anytime soon as the country continues to expand, particularly because its industry is so dependent on burning fossil fuels like coal.
Releasing a white paper on climate change, Chinese officials conceded that increased emissions of carbon dioxide had played havoc with the environment in China, but said economic growth on such a massive scale was necessary to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of poor people.
"Climate change has already brought real threats to China's ecological system and economic and social development," Xie Zhenhua, a deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission, said.
It is China's first official acknowledgement that it could already be the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, although environmentalists have said for a while now that China has surpassed the US in producing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels. Two-thirds of China's energy needs are supplied by coal.
"If our overall emissions are similar to that of the United States, per capita that means that China's 1.3 billion people emit about one-fifth of emissions of the 300 million people in the United States," Mr Xie said.
China has witnessed unprecedented growth in the last three decades, with millions of new cars hitting the streets and thousands of new coal-burning power stations and factories springing up all over the country. China is likely to come under greater pressure to play a more prominent role in international efforts to come up with a solution to global warming.
Pollution in China's major cities has reached crisis point and many of the country's rivers are badly polluted, while glaciers on the Tibetan plateau are melting, threatening ecological catastrophe. China is in a bind, trying to balance economic growth and environmental sustainability.
"China will strive for rational growth of energy demand . . . however, its coal-dominated energy mix cannot be substantially changed in the near future, thus making the control of greenhouse gases rather difficult," the policy document said.