China will accelerate legislation and improve the enforcement of the environmental laws to protect the environment, Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, said today at a press conference sponsored by the State Council Information Office.

Xie Zhenhua said that during the ninth Five-Year Plan period (1996-2000), great achievements have been made in the environmental protection. The environmental condition has been improved and public awareness of the environment has been strengthened to a great extent.

However, generally speaking, the way of the extensive economy development and the predatory exploitation of the resources have not been changed basically. The ecosystem deterioration is still existing and to some extent is expanding and exacerbating in some areas.

The targets of environment protection in the 10th Five-Year Plan are to make strenuous efforts in order to improve the situation of environment; to slow down the degradation trend of the ecology; to improve the environmental quality in key cities and regions and to accelerate legislation and policy making in this regard as well as management system of environmental protection adaptive to socialist market economy.

Zhu Guangyao, vice-director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, says that we have done a lot of work on eco-construction and eco-protection, but in some areas, the environment has been deteriorated. This is mainly due to the inadequate enforcement of laws and regulations.

Many problems are caused by people's unawareness of the importance of ecology. To resolve these questions, we need to enhance legislation and enforcement of the environmental laws .

Xie Zhenhua also says that strengthening enforcement of laws is an important work in the future. He gives an example of a polluting paper mills in Gansu Province, which have not been under well control. He urges local governments to pay more attention to these problems and accelerate law making and enforcement.

(CIIC 12/22/2000)