End the "hypocrisy" that blames China and other developing countries for environmental damage when sustainable development is the collective responsibility of nations, the World Economic Forum on East Asia was told today.

China's economic boom has given rise to massive and harmful pollution nationwide, and a Dutch government research body said last week that China for the first time spewed out more carbon-dioxide emissions last year than the United States.

Malaysia's Second Minister of Finance, Nor Mohamed Yakcop, told the forum that "the companies that are polluting in China are owned by Americans and Europeans and Japanese and others".

"They are benefitting from the cheap labour. They are benefitting from the resources...."

He said it is a mistake to single out China or other countries as the culprits.

"It's wrong... There should be no hypocrisy," Yakcop said.

Malaysia and Indonesia, the world's leading producers of crude palm oil, are leading a campaign to fight environmentalist claims that their plantations destroy vast swathes of tropical forest, pushing endangered animals like the orangutan towards extinction.

"Countries without trees keep telling the countries with trees to stop chopping them down and to slow down growth. We can't slow down growth because we have plenty of poverty left," Yakcop told the forum attended by about 300 business leaders and government officials.

"The emphasis must be on growth, really, and we have to, all of us, work together to make it sustainable," he said, adding that growth and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive.