Beijing (AsiaNews/SCMP) – More than half of the mainland's thousands of chemical plants are located along its main rivers, posing serious threats to water supplies, this according to Zhou Shengxian, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, who yesterday warned of inconceivable consequences if accidents similar to last year's massive contamination of the Songhua River occurred again.

"According to a recent nationwide survey, China has about 21,000 chemical plants, with more than 50 per cent of them located along the Yangtze or the Yellow River," Mr Zhou said at a press briefing.

The survey showed that not only many chemical plants were built in inappropriate locations without the environmental impact assessments required by a national environmental law, but more than 100 of then have "obvious safety risks".

Mr Zhou said the results of the survey, which was triggered by the country's worst chemical spill caused by a Jilin chemical plant explosion in November, would be made public after the Lunar New Year.

The situation, he believes, stems from "the blind pursuit of economic development among local cadres over environmental protection" around the country.

"In the first decades of the new People's Republic, we achieved economic growth at the cost of damaging the environment," he said.

Never the less, "the Chinese government has made some necessary adjustments to the guiding policies of environmental protection and put an end to a conventional approach which could be characterised as 'pollution and destruction first, treatment later'," he explained.