The notice affects more than 1,000 companies that will be required to shut down or move away after the environmental protection standards have been raised in the cities of the Pearl River Delta.

The companies are mainly involved in the electroplating, ceramics, shoe-making, furniture, chemical, dyeing and electronics industries.

These companies started production in the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Huizhou and Jiangmen in the Pearl River Delta in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, when the country began opening up to the outside world.

To improve the province's environment, Guangdong's authorities have also planned to close down 260 oil and petrochemical companies that are seriously polluting the environment and another 6,000 companies that are annually discharging industrial waste of more than 100 tons each.

Meanwhile, the province will shut down all the power generating units with a capacity of less than 50,000 kilowatts each and with coal and oil as the raw materials before 2007.

And all the province's thermal power plants will be required to conduct desulphurization to reduce their pollution and meet the State's environmental protection standards before 2008, according to the governor.

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