The loans accounted for about 30 percent of the total foreign investment used in environmental protection during the five years and has contributed a lot to China's environmental protection efforts.

So said Wang Xinfang, vice-director of the State Environmental Protection Administration at the China-Japan seminar on environmental improvement, which was jointly organized by the Ministry of Finance, the State Environmental Protection Administration and the Japan Bank for International Co-operation and held yesterday in Beijing.

During the seminar, five Japanese experts showed their Chinese counterparts the successes and experience they acquired dealing with environmental pollution which occurred along with the development of Japanese enterprises.

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which offers aid to developing countries, will provide China with even more money and technical support for environmental protection during China's 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05), according to Hiroto Arakawa, deputy director general of the bank's second development assistance department.

Future loans from the bank will give priority to the prevention of environmental pollution and aims to set up several model cities or projects, said the deputy director.

For example, Chongqing Municipality, Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning Province and Guiyang in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, were chosen as model cities for environmental protection and received loans from the bank, he said.

The bank will also pay more attention to western areas and poverty-stricken regions in China and help them with environmental protection, he added.

He stressed that in addition to economic aid, the bank will try to introduce Japan's environmental protection techniques and management ideas to China.

(China Daily 03/10/2001)