On Saturday, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment revealed at a news conference that local officials of Linfen city, North China's Shanxi province, falsified the local air quality data. Beijing News comments:

Some media reports describe in detail how the Linfen officials falsified the data. As the air quality monitoring stations are directly run by the central government, the local officials hired people to cover the air sampling devices of six local monitoring stations with wet cloths, so that the measured density of pollutants became lower. In order to avoid being seen by the cameras, they prepared gloves, hats and helmets, and even tried to hack the computers of the monitoring stations.

In March, the monitoring stations found the data were abnormal so they reported to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. The police and judiciary quickly did their jobs, and the 16 people involved were found guilty by the local court on May 30.

This is not the first instance of local officials trying to falsify air quality data. In 2016, officials of Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, reportedly blocked the sampling devices of local air quality monitoring stations with cotton to falsify data.

In both cases, it was environmental protection officials that took the lead in falsifying the data.

Such cases often happen, not least because there is a lack of effective supervision. Reports show the involved Linfen officials had been falsifying the air monitoring data for a year before they were caught. It was the investigation by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment that uncovered everything.

To prevent similar cases from happening again, it is necessary to organize more inspection tours, so that any dirty deeds of local officials will be uncovered. All those who are found guilty of illegal deeds should receive deserved penalty.

The ministry should also work with nongovernmental environmental organizations to better supervise local officials. Some of these organizations are quite professional and their data could be used for comparison purposes.

In a word, falsifying data must be totally rooted out.