China and the EU have launched a €175-million campaign to clean up the country's two largest river basins as Beijing struggles to cope with the environmental consequences of rapid growth.

The five-year programme to clean up the Yangtze and Yellow river basins will work out policies on pollution control and promote public awareness about reducing industrial pollution and waste discharge, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

The project will also pay people living in China's southwestern provinces to plant trees in an effort to improve the ecology along the Yangtze. The Yangtze basin is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, due to decades of heavy industrialisation, damming and influxes of sediment.

A stretch of the Yellow River became so polluted it turned red from contamination last year and nearly a third of all fish species in it have become extinct.

The problem of water shortages in China has also been compounded by pollution, with billions of tonnes of untreated waste water pumped directly into lakes and rivers.