China has punished officials in the provinces of Jiangxi and Henan for tampering with pollution monitoring equipment in order to reduce smog readings, the environment ministry said.
China has been waging a "war on pollution" since 2014 in a bid to reverse the environmental and political damage done by more than three decades of economic growth, but enforcement has been a constant problem.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said Sunday that officials in the cities of Xinyu in Jiangxi and Xinyang in Henan sought to reduce emissions readings by spraying water on their air quality sensors.