China’s efforts to clean up the environment have neither resulted in job losses nor damaged the economy, environment minister Li Ganjie said on Monday, as he resolved to press on with the government’s drive to curb pollution. “It is impossible to say corporations have not felt a partial impact,” he told a press conference in Beijing on the sidelines of the party congress, the South China Morning Post reports. “But if we look from a long-term perspective, there is no impact. Strengthening environmental protection… goes hand in hand with economic development.” The country is in the fourth year of a “war on pollution” designed to reverse the damage caused by decades of unchecked economic growth, such as contaminated soil, polluted water and choking smog, all of which contribute to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every year. Since the end of 2015, inspections have resulted in the punishment of about 10,000 people for breaches of environmental protection regulations.