China's GDP to account for ecological costs

To promote sustainable economic development, China has begun accounting for the environmental costs of its economic output on a pilot basis, environmental regulators said. Beijing and nine other municipalities and provinces, have begun to factor in such costs in calculating their GDP. The rest of the country is expected to implement the "Green GDP" calculation model next year. Experts say China's annual GDP growth rate will decline by as much as by 2 percentage points when environmental charges are taken into account.