Ren Longjiang, a senior official with the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), has vowed to deliver equally harsh punishments to domestic and foreign-funded firms that violate environmental laws, saying that all enterprises must obey China's environmental laws and regulations.

His statement comes after Unilever China and the China branch of Hitachi Construction Machinery, targeted in a random inspection by the environmental watchdog earlier this year, were found discharging more wastewater than permitted.

¡°Environmental pollution caused by foreign-funded companies has come to the attention of SEPA, and we will strengthen our supervision,¡± Ren told Xinhua News Agency. ¡°We were surprised to find both companies had pollution problems as they were the only two foreign companies selected at random for the inspection,¡± he said.

On May 24 2007, the two foreign-funded companies were targeted by a SEPA inspection team, which found Unilever's plant in Hefei, Anhui Province to have discharged wastewater with a chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 379 mg per litre. The legal limit for this measure of organic pollutants is 330 mg/l. The company was fined Rmb100,000 (US$13,000) and ordered to scale back production to discharge less wastewater. Unilever has also paid fees of Rmb47,136 for excessive discharges.

During the same inspection, the China branch of Hitachi Construction Machinery, also in Hefei, was found to have discharged wastewater with PH values exceeding the legal limit.

In response to such problems, environmental officials and experts have called for a cumulative daily penalty system to be included in the water pollution prevention law, which is being amended and received its first review last month. Experts say that the system could help to solve the problem of a high cost of compliance, but penalties would be negligible.