China must cut pollution by half before environment improves: official

China needs to slash emission levels by as much as half before any obvious improvements are made to its environment, a senior government official said on Friday, underscoring the challenges facing the country after three decades of breakneck growth. Zhai Qing, China's deputy minister of environmental protection, told a briefing that pollutants had been cut by just "a few percentage points" since 2006 and had to drop much further if any progress is to be made. China has vowed to cl