Environmental minister warns of overlooking rural pollution

China risks overlooking pollution in the countryside as it puts greater effort and funding into combating urban pollution, the country's new environmental protection minister said.

While measures are being introduced to curb industrial pollution in cities, the amount of pollutants in the countryside is also on the rise, Chen Jining said at a press conference on Saturday at the ongoing national legislative session.

Chen, who became head of the Environmental Protection Ministry in late February, said environmental control measures have been applied in only 10 percent of rural villages, which are mostly very dirty.

He vowed to give more attention to the problem of countryside pollution.

The central government has allocated 25 billion yuan (about 4 billion U.S. dollars) to deal with rural pollution by the end of 2014.

While the fund is expected to cover 59,000 villages and benefit 110 million people, it still looks inadequate compared with spending on urban pollution. In Beijing alone, officials plan to spend 50 billion yuan on curbing pollution over the next five years. Endi