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The Chinese Government has committed itself, in its 10th Five-Year
Plan (2001-05), to improving the nation's environment through a
combination of laws and increased environmental investment, a top
environmental protection official said Monday.
Xie Zhenhua, minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration,
revealed this plan at a seminar on sustainable development policy.
Speaking before Xie, Yukon Huang, the World Bank's country director
of China, asserted that financial turmoil, rising unemployment and
a deteriorating environment will be the major threats to China's
development in the next 20 years.
Xie acknowledged the serious environmental situation unfolding in
China and stressed that pollution will gradually be reduced.
As part of the ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000), the central government
attempted to limit gross pollution to the level it reached in 1995.
By 1999, the country had exceeded that goal, actually lowering the
gross pollution level.
During that period, environmental investment reached 380 billion
yuan (US$45.9 billion), accounting for roughly 1 percent of the
nation's gross domestic product.
The goal of the new 10th Five-Year Plan is to reduce gross pollution
levels by 10 percent by 2005.
Xie emphasized that environmental protection must be balanced, and
enhanced, with economic progress.
"Only with better development, can the government and enterprises
attain the money and technology to fight pollution," the minister
said.
Xie pointed to the law as one tool in the fight against pollution.
Enterprises unable to introduce pollution treatment facilities will
be heavily fined in order to benefit those manufacturers who adopt
relatively expensive environmentally friendly technologies and techniques.
The minister added that pollution prevention should be combined
with industrial restructuring. Low efficiency, high pollution enterprises
will be gradually phased out, and clean industries, such as the
hi-tech and service industries, will be developed.
Xie admitted that the sewage treatment rate in large cities is currently
only 15 percent, but he promised that the rate would reach 50 percent
by 2004.
Foreign investment in sewage treatment is currently low because
fees paid for sewage services are low. But, according to Xie, the
State Council has decided to increase these fees in order to make
the field a reasonably profitable market.
More than 100 central and local officials and researchers participated
in the seminar, which was jointly sponsored by the World Bank and
the National School of Administration.
Doctor Claude Martin, director general of the World Wildlife Fund,
and Bjorn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, also made presentations.
(China Daily 10/30/2000)
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