Yang Yuanyuan, vice-minister of the CAAC, told the 11th ICAO regional safety seminar, which started Monday in Beijing, that his ministry attached great importance to the issue.

"Through active communication and cooperation with foreign airlines and international aviation organizations, China will spare no effort to upgrade its aviation supervision," he said.

Yang said the Chinese Government will also invest large amounts of money in aviation safety projects.

An advanced radar supervision and navigation system, which will cover large areas of China, is expected to be completed soon. A nationwide radar navigation network will be established before the end of 2005.

Yang said satellite navigation technologies are also under construction in China.

The country received safety aviation supervision from the ICAO in 1999 and is actively improving and renovating facilities to meet ICAO safety standards.

Officials from the international organization will give advice on safety standards at the 12-day-long seminar and teach Chinese safety experts how to apply aviation standards to domestic airlines.

China's airlines had a relatively good safety record, although two crashes in Zhejiang Province's Wenzhou and Hubei's Wuhan in the last two years, which killed more than 100 people, started to ring alarm bells.

(China Daily 11/21/2000)