China has stopped the public release of an official study putting a cost to the nation's environmental damage, a government researcher told a Chinese newspaper, blaming official reluctance to confront pollution.

The Beijing News reported on Monday that the release of a "green GDP" report computing the cost of pollution and ecological degradation in 2005 had been "indefinitely postponed".

Wang Jinnan, a senior expert at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning who was technical head of the project, said publicising the cost of bad air, water and soil had drawn fierce opposition from local officials eager to maintain growth.

"Taking out the costs of environmental damage would lead to a huge fall in the quality of economic growth in some areas," Wang told the paper.

"At present many areas still place GDP above all else, and when such thinking dominates, the size of resistance to a green GDP can well be imagined."

Wang said some provincial governments had lobbied the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics not to release the data.

The report was originally scheduled for release in March, the China Youth Daily reported.

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