Authorities in Beijing plan to develop a network of ventilation "corridors" to help tackle the city's notorious air pollution, China's state news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday. Construction in the zones, which will be created by connecting parks, rivers, lakes, highways and low building blocks, will be strictly controlled and obstacles to air flow will be removed over time, Xinhua cited Wang Fei, deputy head of Beijing's urban planning committee, as saying. There will be five large corridors that will be more than 500 metres (0.3 miles) wide and several smaller ones, the report said, without giving a time frame for the project. Pollution is a sensitive topic in China, spurring public protests every year about environmental degradation, particularly from factories.