The quality of the environment in Shaanxi, an inland province in Northwest China, has been continuously improving thanks to efforts made by the provincial government in the past five years.

The average annual discharge of four major pollutant emissions, including chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, decreased in 2015, compared to 2014, according to preliminary calculation results issued recently by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said Hao Yanwei, spokesman and deputy director of Shaanxi provincial Environmental Protection Department.

"We completed the tasks issued by the central government for decreasing the discharge of the four major pollutant emissions by 186%, 139%, 284% and 183% respectively, for the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015)," Hao said.

The province's 10 cities and prefectures enjoyed between 251 and 306 days of quality weather in 2015, each an increase from 2014, Hao said.

And PM10 air pollution in Xi'an, the province's capital, which suffers worse air pollution, decreased by 14.3 percent. The city's PM2.5 air pollution decreased by 23.7 in 2015, compared with that in 2014, Hao said.

In addition to the air quality improvement, the spokesman said, water quality in the province's rivers was reported as stable to good in 2015.