French company Lafarge has donated 1,000 tons of lime to the Beijing Municipal Cultural Relics Administration (BMCRA) for the renovation of the city's ancient wall.

The lime will be used for repair of the 57-meter section of a decayed city wall east of the Beijing Railway Station, said Dung Van Anh, chief representative of the China office of Lafarge. The wall was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Dung said that Lafarge will continue to lend financial support for protecting Beijing's historical sites in the future.

Mei Ninghua, director of BMCRA, said that Beijingers donated ancient city wall bricks they had collected for the rebuilding of the city's ancient wall in 1996 and that the administration has gathered about 60,000 bricks.

However, he said, the bricks are only enough to build a 20-30 m section of the extremely high city wall.

Lafarge currently has ten manufacturing companies in China since it first entered the country about five years ago. Its cement company in Dujiangyan City of southwest China's Sichuan Province has an investment of 130 billion US dollars and will be the biggest cement producer in southwest China when it is finished in two years.