A report by China’s central bank says that the country needs 2 trillion yuan (about $322 billion) every year for the next five years if it wants to counter the impact of pollution on the environment. The startling number is three percent of China’s total GDP.
The annual government budget sits at around 14.2 trillion yuan and the portion dedicated to the environment was 1 trillion yuan in 2014.
But even these numbers may not cover dealing with the full extent of environmental pollution in China. “Spending a few trillion yuan would only mitigate the level of pollution, but to really solve the pollution issue in China, a few trillion won’t do. China needs hundreds of trillions,” according to Frank Tian Xie, a professor at the Business School of the University of South Carolina, in an interview with Radio Free Asia.
