China's Old Heavy Industrial Base Turns Eco-FriendlyNortheast China's Jilin Province, known for its auto industry, has declared in a 30-year development plan that it will invest 784 billion yuan (95.6 billion US dollars) in environment-friendly industries.Jilin is the third province in China to announce such a plan for future development. And Jilin's has plan passed an evaluation by experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Engineering Saturday. The Chinese government is exploring an environment-friendly growth pattern that is fit for China's economic and social situation, said Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration. China has set up 213 national model regions for the trial application of the sustainable growth pattern. Apart from three provinces, Hainan Province in south China and Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in the northeast, all the model regions are counties and cities. Jilin is well known as one of China's major heavy industry bases for several decades since the country's first auto producer was established there. And the company, now called the First Automobile Works Group. is the largest auto maker in China. According to this long-term development plan, the auto makers in the province are required to adopt environment-friendly technologies and minimize pollution. More efforts will be directed to boost the so-called "green businesses" such as tourism, pollution-free agriculture and traditional Chinese medicine, said Hong Hu, the provincial governor. Jilin now faces relatively severe environment problems including soil erosion, and water and air pollution due to the irrational use of resources and ignorance about environmental protection in past decades. |
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