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Improvement of ecological environment will be taken as the prime
task as well as the starting point of China's large-scale economic
development of its western regions, a leading government official
said Saturday in Beijing.
Energy production will also be placed high on the agenda, said Wang
Zhibao, deputy director of the Office for the Development of the
Western Regions under the State Council, or the central government,
at a press conference during the first session of the 10th National
Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC) Saturday afternoon.
The press conference focused mainly on China's poverty alleviation
endeavor and development of the mid-western region.
Wang said it constitutes an issue of major concern to the entire
nation to keep improving ecological environment and give top
priority in the development of the western regions.
He
said the ecological projects to be undertaken include the
protection of natural forests, return farmland to forests, control
desertification, and close pastures for the renewal of
grassland.
More than 500 billion yuan (more than US$60 billion) of funds have
been earmarked to efforts in the above four aspects, he noted. And
all the funds will be directly transferred to the farmers.
Energy industry is expected to be a key factor for the development
of China's western region, which would be turned into one of the
country's leading energy production bases, he added.
Meanwhile, he acknowledged that a major energy project of
transmitting electric power from the western regions to the eastern
coastal areas was expected to involve a total investment of over
500 billion yuan (US$60.24 billion).
Moreover, another project of piping natural gas from the western
regions to the east China region, a land-mark project in the
western development drive, will cover a number of routes, Wang
noted, with the most vital route starting the Tarim basin in
northwestern part of Xinjiang autonomous region and traversing a
long distance right to the destination of the leading financial
center of Shanghai in east China.
(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2003)
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