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Buried in this expansive New York Times story about China's mind-blowing environmental pollution is this nugget:

Energy and environmental officials have little influence in the bureaucracy. The environmental agency still has only about 200 full-time employees, compared with 18,000 at the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

China has no Energy Ministry. The Energy Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s central planning agency, has 100 full-time staff members. The Energy Department of the United States has 110,000 employees.

And that, I'm afraid, tells you pretty much all you need to know about how serious China really is about tackling its massive environmental problems; after all, this is the country that more or less invented bureaucracy. As Harry Harding noted several months back for FP, China's most serious risks are environmental—and it's time Beijing got serious about tackling them. See also Elizabeth Economy's latest essay in Foreign Affairs, which lays out just how extensive the reforms are going to have to be if the Chinese are to make any headway.