Govt attaches importance to issue of climate change: Official

BALI—A senior Chinese official said here on Wednesday that the Chinese Government attached great importance to the issue of climate change.
Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), made the remarks at a high-level segment meeting of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, a resort island of Indonesia.
Xie, who is heading China’s delegation to the U.N. climate meeting, said that in pursuing its economic development, China has been undertaking a series of policies and measures to address climate change and to protect the environment in accordance with the country’s sustainable development strategy, and has achieved tremendous achievements.”
He said that by restructuring its economy and improving energy efficiency, China has saved 800 million tons of coal equivalent energy in the period from 1990 to 2005 and avoided 1.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions.
“China’s 11th Five-year Plan for the Economic and Social Development also clearly sets the targets of making achievements in controlling GHG emissions and reducing its per unit GDP energy consumption by 20 percent by 2010 over that of 2005,” he added.
“China also formulated its National Climate Change Program, further elaborating the guidelines, basic principles, detailed objectives and key areas of mitigation and adaptation. This fully shows the sincerity and determination of China to actively address climate change and participate in related international cooperations,” he stressed.
He added that to conserving resources and protecting the environment are China’s basic national policies. The Chinese Government has established the National Leading Group on Climate Change headed by Premier Wen Jiabao in order to strengthen leadership and to effectively address climate change
“On the recently-concluded 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Party Secretary-General Hu Jintao pointed out that China will further pursue its Scientific Think of Development and stick to a human-orientated, comprehensively harmonious and sustainable development path,” Xie noted.
Xie said that China will endeavor to construct an eco-civilization, and will remarkably increase the proportion of renewable energy, effectively control the emissions of major pollutants, improve the quality of eco-environment.
China will also enhance its capacity building on addressing climate change and make new contributions to the protection of global climate. All of these efforts indicated that the Chinese Government will be trying its best to make positive efforts to address climate change in a responsible manner, he said.—Xinhua