Rules and regulations

In addition to these technical approaches, the center has established a series of rules to regulate people who are involved in monitoring work.

Because of the limited manpower quota allocated by the central government, the center outsources the maintenance work of all national-level air and water monitoring stations to private companies.

Currently, more than 3,000 employees of these companies are involved in the maintenance of the stations, and the national center has published specific dos and don'ts for staff members.

According to the center, there are 1,881 national-level water quality monitoring stations across the country and all their systems work in a similar way to those that monitor air quality.

"We have a white list for these staff. None of them can communicate with local governments on issues not included in it, but the national center can," Wang, the engineer, said.

According to a nine-point don'ts list especially formulated for these staff, they cannot make use of their work to market their company's product or solicit environmental projects. They are not allowed to accept gifts from the governments of the areas in which they work or use vehicles provided by those authorities.

"Though not public servants, these 3,000-plus people are also listed as targets of national disciplinary inspections," Chen said.

If companies want to bid to do the maintenance work, they must pledge that they will work under an eight-point regulation on improving Party and government conduct that was issued by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in 2012, and also sign a letter of commitment, he added.

A special punishments clause is included in all of the center's contracts with companies that win the bids.

Under the clause, should any outside employee at the national center be punished for violating the eight-point list of regulations, his or her employer will be fined 10 percent of the money they should be paid, Chen said.

"The clause works. So far, none of the companies has dared to treat me to a meal or give me gifts," he said.

He added that the center supervises and assesses the performance of the monitoring team in a timely manner to evaluate the quality of the monitoring.

The center's quality control department inspects all the monitoring stations regularly, and will trace any problems identified until they have been properly rectified, he added.

"No data falsification can be committed without being unearthed by us," he said.