Government and Policy
China's efforts to tackle climate change in last decade
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-21 16:43
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BEIJING - The 40th World Earth Day falls on Thursday this year, with a theme of "climate change - the mother of all environmental and community issues."
China has made continuous efforts to address climate change challenges while maintaining rapid economic growth in recent years.
The following are the major policies rolled out by the Chinese government since the year 2000, which are aimed to improve the economic growth pattern, promote energy conservation, prevent environment pollution, and push up the development of the recycling economy.
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From 2003 to 2005, the government enacted a series of laws and regulations to increase recycling, including Clean Production Promotion Law, and the Prevention of Environmental Pollution by Solid Wastes Law. The laws and regulations set the general strategy, short-term goals, basic means, and measures for the development of a recycling economy.
In 2005, the government promulgated laws, incentivizing renewable energy usage by the state power grid and giving users of renewable energy price discounts, to promote clean energy usage in power sector.
In 2006, the government issued a slew of measures to curb the expansion of high-energy-consuming industries, including raising market entry threshold and adjusting tax rebates for exports and customs duties to restrain exports of commodities produced in an energy inefficient way.
In 2006, the government launched ten major energy-conservation projects, estimated to have stopped the burning of 240 million tonnes of standard coal from 2006 to 2010. It also launched an energy-conserving campaign among more than 1,000 enterprises in steel, non-ferrous metals and coal sectors in 2006, encouraging them to audit their energy use, map out energy-saving plans and reveal their energy use to the public.
In 2007, the government announced a timetable for different regions to close down their old and polluting production facilities in 13 industries, including power generation, steel, cement and glass production industries.
China has been making great efforts to adjust the economic structure, and to create a growth mode featuring "less input, less consumption, less emission and high efficiency."
In 2007, the government issued plans to boost the development of the service sector, providing support to key areas. Later in the year, the government formulated policies to push up the development of high-tech industries.
In 2007, the government established an accountability system for energy conservation and emission reduction, requiring leading officials in all provinces and key enterprises to be appraised by their performance regarding promoting energy saving and reducing pollutants.
In 2008, China limited use of plastics, requiring supermarkets, department stores, grocery stores to no longer provide free plastic shopping bags in a bid to reduce energy consumption and pollution.
