Respected Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all, let me, on behalf of the State Economic and Trade Commission, offer our warm congratulations to the Third Meeting of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
Environmental protection and development are common tasks for the whole of mankind. In a bid to boost its construction of socialist modernization, China attaches great importance to protecting the environment, making it a basic state policy. China has formulated a strategic policy of simultaneous design, implementation and development of economic, urban and rural and environmental projects to realize unified economic, social and environmental benefits, and has carried out three major policies of "Prevention First, Combination of Prevention and Control", "Polluter is responsible for the pollution", and "Strengthening Management for the Environment". In the past twenty years and more, especially in the past fifteen years since the reform started, China's industrial pollution control and prevention has made great headway, which is demonstrated by the fact that, although the national economy is doubled, the total discharge volume of pollutants has not gone up proportionately and the discharge of some pollutants have even been reduced. In a word, the industrial pollution has been brought under basic control. However, the industrial pollution is still serious: Emission of SO2 and green- house gases is growing annually and there are not yet effective control management and treatment measures; Acid rain is covering a bigger area; Emission of soot remains high and 100% northern cities exceed the national standard for TSP emission; Discharge of organic matters, COD in particular, in waste water is rising with each passing year and river sections running through cities are generally polluted, only to a different degree. As its economy is growing rapidly, China's pollutant discharge will increase. If no effective measures are adopted for prevention and control, the environmental quality is surely to go down. Therefore, we must attach great attention to the prevention and control of industrial pollution at the same time when we are developing economy.
First, it is necessary to strengthen management for the environment. This is a forceful measure in industrial pollution prevention and control. On the one hand, the Government must apply legislative, economic and administrative means to management: No.1 is to make and complete environmental protection laws, regulations and standards, with an attempt to provide legislative basis for environmental protection; No.2 is to engage in macro planning. Efforts should be made to adjust unreasonable industrial structure, product structure and industrial layout, so that resources could be optimally used and pollution be prevented and controlled; No.3 is to encourage and help enterprises to adopt economic and technological policies aimed at pollution prevention and control; No.4 is to go for strict law enforcement and monitoring management and do away with the situation in which laws are not observed, or not carried out to the letter and violation of laws is not punished. On the other hand, enterprises must follow the various laws, regulations issued by the state and shoulder the responsibility of their own pollution management. Meanwhile, enterprises include environmental protection into the w hole process of production operation and make active contributions to industrial pollution prevention and control.
Secondly, we must rely on technological progress, which is the only way to industrial pollution prevention and control. A major cause for the country's industrial pollution is the backward equipment and production process of the existing enterprises. They bring about large consumption and waste. For the time being, Chin a has more than 400,000 industrial boilers, two thirds of which are small in size and have only 50% heat efficiency, and more than 20 million kilowatts of medium and low pressure electricity generation units whose consumption of coal doubles that of big ones. 80% of China's thermal electricity comes from coal-burning plants and they are basically without desulphurization equipment. It is therefore necessary to speed up technical reform of the existing enterprises and improve the whole industries' technical equipment and production process. Clean production through technological progress is an effective way to pollution control and prevention. We would like to eliminate pollutants during the process of production through advanced technology and equipment and improved utilization of wastes and turn them into resources in a maximum manner. This will not only bring environmental effects but also economic benefits. To raise our technology level of industrial pollution prevention and control, it is necessary to enhance scientific research and develop environmental technology that suit China's situation, including introduction of advanced technology from other countries into China and reforming and providing the existing enterprises with new technology, production process, new materials and equipment.
Thirdly, we should increase financial input. Financial input is a necessary guarantee for the work. The Government should earmark a certain amount of capital investment for environmental protection and make it part of the social welfare system. And the investment should grow annually with the improvement of the comprehensive state capacity. Apart from that, efforts should also be made to raise fund from multiple channels for the prevention and control of industrial pollution. As a developing country, China's primary task is to develop economy. It is, therefore, quite impossible for us at this stage to spend large sum of money on pollution control. We need support and assistance of the international community, especially of the developed countries, who have obligations to help developing countries. We hope to establish extensive cooperation with the international community and countries concerned in the field of industrial pollution prevention and control, through various ways possible, such as joint venture, cooperative development and production, technology introduction and transfer, etc.
Let us join our hands and strive for a wonderful future of the whole mankind.
Thank you.