CPPCC member Wu Zhizhong was elated when recalling the happy days of playing and catching fish, shrimps and crabs in the shallow waters of the Bohai Sea when he was a child, but he was very much frustrated when he told his fellow CPPCC members that the sea is now tainted with floating trashes and spilled oil and other pollutants.

"It brooks no delay to salvage the sea," said Wu Zhizhong, who has developed a special feeling for the sea hemmed in on three sides by Liaoning, Hebei and Shandong provinces and Tianjin Municipality known as the Bohai-rim economic sphere.

A member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) now attending the annualsession in Beijing, Wu said that "humans are the main culprits accounting for the deterioration of the quality of the sea water. Sewage and dirt are emptied into the sea by more than 40 rivers, including the Yellow River, the Xiaoqing River, the Haihe River, the Luanhe River and the Liaohe River. The contaminated water and sewage water from the cities of the two provinces and the Tianjin Municipality are discharged directly into the sea. It was estimated that a total of 2.8 billion tons of sewage water and more than 700,000 tons of dirt are discharged into the sea every year."

Wu urged departments concerned to act strictly in accordance with the law and give top priority to environmental protection andban the building of polluting projects.

The polluting sources around the sea must be ordered to controland treat their wastes so that they would not flow into the sea directly, he suggested.

(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2003)