Chapter 2
Formulation and
Implementation
of the Sustainable Development Strategy
Section 1 Sustainable Development - the Inevitable Choice of the Chinese Government
2.1 China is a developing country. In the past 48 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and especially in the recent 18 years since reform and opening up, great economic progress has been made, achieving on average a GNP annual growth rate in excess of 9%. In 1995, China reached its first stage of strategic objectives for modernisation with a GNP four times that of the year 1980, five years ahead of the designated time. In the meantime, a breakthrough was achieved in economic structure adjustment. With apparent progress in the marketisation and socialisation of the national economy, the socialist market economy is being gradually established. Re-adjustment of the industrial structure has also produced impressive results. This change in structure has gradually integrated the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries harmoniously. Regional economies have also developed in a sound way, and great progress has been made in the fields of science, technology, and education. On the whole, the overall society has developed, people's living standards, both urban and rural, have been greatly improved, and the number of people living in poverty has been further reduced.
2.2 Despite China's rapid economic growth, it can not be forgotten that China is still a country with an enormous population, low per capita share of resources, a relatively weak economic foundation, and low scientific and technological capacity. Although China has made tremendous efforts to control its population growth rate, owing to its large size China's population had grown to 1.224 billion by the end of 1996. China's per capita share of freshwater, arable land, forest, and grassland is less than one third of the world average, and the annual losses caused by frequent natural disasters such as flooding, drought, earthquake, etc. have resulted in damage in excess of RMB 100 billion yuan. In spite of the great efforts for environmental protection, China's emissions of main pollutants (such as waste gases, wastewater, and solid wastes) are still increasing and city-centred environmental pollution is increasing and spreading to rural areas.
2.3 In view of these mounting challenges, China convened the Fourth Session of the Eighth National People's Congress in March of 1996, in which the "Ninth Five-Year Plan for National Social and Economic Development and the Long-Term Objectives for the Year 2010" was approved as China's important guideline for entering the 21st Century. It clearly sets forth two important strategies: sustainable development and reinvigorating the country through education, science, and technology. It also requires two fundamental shifts in economic structure and mode of economic development. As well, at the Fourth National Conference on Environmental Protection held in July of 1996, the Chinese Government pointed out that:
"We should attach great importance to sustainable development in our socialist modernisation cause, and economic development should be taken into account in balance with population control, environmental protection, and rational use of natural resources. We should arrange our present development in a way that can create better conditions for our descendants. It is a waste of resources to pollute first and then try to take countermeasures. We should not depend only on what our ancestors left us and leave nothing to descendants. It is an objective demand and China's inevitable choice, for the present and in the future, to take the road of sustainable development for our economic and social prosperity, which can bring benefits both currently and to our descendants ."
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