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the basic national condition of relatively deficient resources will remain
unchanged. So caution must be used to treasure the limited resources in
the course of western development. It must be recognized what an important
and arduous task it is to treasure the limited land and resources, said
Minister Tian. The most rigorous management of resources should be adopted.
Adequate attention should be paid to comprehensive planning to balance
population, resources, environment and social development. The legal obligation
of compensated occupancy of farmland should be conscientiously fulfilled.
Administration according to law should be advocated, and law enforcement
and supervision strengthened. Eventually a pattern of economic development
based on resources conservation should be developed. He said that over the last few years, idle
and low-efficiency utilization of urban construction land as well as the
reckless building of big roads, big squares and big development zones
have been seen reducing. However, in rural areas, idle land, the possession
of multiple houses by one household, and extra land-use are quite common.
The "numerous, small and scattered" mining enterprises remain
the main source of extensive and wasteful development of mineral resources.
The national rate of mineral resources recovery is only around 30 percent,
20 percentage points lower than the world average. Owing to multi-departmental
management and multi-channel export, the frantic exploitation and excessive
export of advantageous mineral resources such as tungsten, tin, antimony
and rare earth have not been effectively curbed. In consequence, China
is losing its superior status in resources. President Jiang Zemin has reiterated that
in order to transform the resources advantages of the western areas into
economic advantages, the principle of rational utilization and resources
conservation must be persisted in. Although the strict control of non-agricultural
land use yielded apparent results last year, construction undertakings
took as much as 206,467 hectare of cultivated land, reducing 436,600 hectare
of cultivated land (of it 394,600 hectare of grain plots were returned).
The protection of cultivated land remains an arduous task that permits
no remissness. The legal obligation of "compensated land use"
must be rigorously fulfilled. |