Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), said China "has paid a high environmental price" for 20 years of rapid economic development, the Xinhua news agency said.

With the economy expected to quadruple by 2020, China faces an "environmental crisis" coupled with social problems unless it corrects its practice of developing first and cleaning up later, he warned.

Speaking at an environmental forum on Saturday, Pan warned that at the current pace of industrialisation, China will suffer from heavily polluted air and water as well as a depletion of its natural resources.

"The pollution load of China will quadruple in 2020, when the country's GDP quadruples, if the pace of pollution remains unchanged," Pan said.

By the same year, China would only have reserves of six out of the current 45 major mineral resources, Pan said.

The level of pollution China is experiencing now is far worse than that which developed countries suffered when they were at a similar stage of industrial development, Pan said.

Serious pollution is occurring now in China, where per-capita GDP lingers between 400 and 1000 US dollars, whereas it only emerged in Western countries when per-capita GDP reached 3,000 to 10,000 dollars, Pan said.

In his blunt warning, Pan questioned whether China should be proud that it has become the world's factory.

As the world's biggest manufacturer, the population giant is using up its resources and polluting its environment to produce goods for countries all across the globe, Pan said.

China ranks first in daily water consumption and sewage discharge, and second in energy consumption and carbon dioxide discharge, Xinhua said.

Its total energy consumption is seven times that of Japan, six times that of the United States and 2.8 times that of India.

Wasteful and damaging development is also leading to a depletion of habitable land.

Since 1949, land suitable for people to live on has shrunk from six million square kilometres (2.4 million square miles) to three million square kilometres now, due to serious soil erosion, Pan said.

He blasted the commonly accepted strategy of China "developing first and preventing and controlling pollution later" as "absolutely wrong".

China, he said, should instead immediately embark on a "green rise".

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