BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Several provinces near Beijing are going all out to help ensure blue skies for the host city of next summer's Olympic Games.

    The local governments of Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi provinces, Tianjin Municipality and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have worked out measures to improve air quality for the high-profile international event.

    The program, also involving the Beijing municipal government and State Environmental Protection Administration, requires the six jurisdictions to cut pollutants that might darken the Olympic skies and set up an air-quality monitoring network focused on heavily-polluting businesses.

    The provincial government of coal-rich Shanxi published its measures last week, ordering that all desulfurization projects at major coal-fired power plants be completed before July 1 next year.

    Businesses in heavily-polluting industries -- power, iron and steel, chemical and concrete -- will have to cut production or even close if they fail to meet the emission standards during the games.

    In addition, all vehicles traveling to Beijing from Shanxi must comply with Europe II emission standards from July 25 to Sept. 20,2008.

    Similar moves will also be taken in Shandong, which discharged 1.96 million tons of sulfur dioxide last year, the most among the mainland's 31 provincial-level regions.

    The Laicheng Power Plant of the Huadian Power International Corp. Ltd. in Shandong's Laiwu City began a desulfurization project on two 300,000-kw generation units in late October with an investment of 140 million yuan (18.9 million U.S. dollars). Originally, the project was scheduled for completion in 2009.

    "We decided to advance its completion by about one year and a half, answering the call of the government," said Liu Canqi, an engineer in the Environmental Section of Huadian's Production Department.

    "The project will help boost the plant's desulfurization capacity by 41,000 tons annually," he said.

    Environmental authorities in Hebei, which surrounds Beijing and Tianjin, have pledged to spend about 21 billion yuan on anti-pollution projects and environmental monitoring stations.

    Efforts to keep pollutants out of the capital include the installation of 34 desulphurization systems in power plants, construction of 23 central heating facilities that would help cut coal use, and 56 anti-pollution projects in the province's chemical industries, said Ji Zhenhai, director of the provincial environment protection bureau.

    The projects could reduce Hebei's annual emissions of about 550,000 tons of sulphur dioxide, he said.

    Meanwhile, Hebei has started to build air-quality monitoring stations in six major cities near Beijing -- Langfang, Baoding, Tangshan, Zhangjiakou, Shijiazhuang and Chengde -- to collect data on emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen monoxide, carbon monoxide and other chemicals.

    "Under certain weather conditions, pollutants from Beijing's neighboring regions will spread to the capital, and vice versa," said Li Xin, a research fellow with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    "In summer and autumn, pollutants mainly come from south of Beijing, especially from southwest and southeast," she said.

    Shanxi, Hebei, Tianjin and Shandong are located south, southwest and southeast of Beijing.

    This past June, smoke from burning waste straw in agricultural areas south of Beijing was blown north, polluting the capital's skies for days.

    "Hebei enjoys such a special geographical position that it cannot develop its economy at the cost of the environment," said Zhang Yunchuan, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

    Although the other regions involved in the clean-air plan have yet to release their measures, sources said that local governments had pledged to punish officials or business leaders with demotion or dismissal if they failed to meet the targets.

    "If you cannot fulfil your task, then go away [from your position]. For those making false statements, they will be punished without leniency," Jiang Daming, acting governor of Shandong, warned at a conference of local pollution-control officials and business leaders.

    Last year, the central government decided to cut energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan (1,351 U.S. dollars) of GDP by 20 percent and pollutants by 10 percent for the 2006-2010 period.

    "We must take this opportunity of ensuring good air quality for the Beijing Olympics as another golden chance for boosting emissions reduction and strengthening controls on atmospheric pollution," Jiang said.