Waters off the industrial port city of Tianjin, 60 miles southeast of Beijing, rose by 7.72 inches over the past three decades, the administration said.
Seas off the business hub of Shanghai have risen by 4.53 inches over the same period, the report said.
Administration experts said global climate change and the sinking of coastal land due to the pumping of ground water were the major causes behind rising water levels.
"Sea level rises worldwide cannot be reversed, so Chinese city officials and planners must take measures to adapt to the change," Chen Manchun, an administration researcher, was quoted as saying on the central government's official Web site.
Globally, rising seas threaten to submerge low-lying island groups, erode coastlines and force the construction of vast new levees. Some scientists have warned that melting of the vast glaciers of Greenland could cause a 13-foot rise in sea levels in coming centuries.
Higher sea levels and sinking land caused by dropping water table levels complicate Shanghai's already difficult task of providing safe water supplies to its 20 million people due to salt water leaching into its aquifer, the administration said.
Along China's 11,185 miles of coastline, sea levels have risen by an average of 3.54 inches, while average coastal water temperatures were slightly warmer, the report said.
Waters levels have risen more quickly in the country's north, the report said, but gave no reasons for the disparity.
Ah, human activities have lowered the land mass rather a bit, eh? But if the rest is global warming why hasn't the rest of the globe seen that rise? And why are there different levels along China's coast? Shouldn't a rise in the global sea level cause a rise in the level of the sea globally? Isn't that the very definition of sea level?
And until thirty years ago, global temperatures were cooling, remember? Why should the very moment temperatures started to rise should the sea be rising off China? Remember, even the claim that melting land ice could raise sea levels is a future claim and not a current description. So shouldn't we be skeptical that the sea is rising right now (and over the last three decades) and start looking for why the land is changing?
Hey, I've go an idea. Maybe the Chinese could stop doing things that cause their land to sink rather than just blame global warming--which the Chinese refuse to do anything about, blaming it all on the West--for their waterfront property problems. Of course, plenty of Westerners will believe that argument and insist we must reduce carbon emissions to balance out Chinese practices that suck the water out of the ground.
