The press center of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) holds a press conference on pursuing green development and building beautiful China, in Beijing on October 23, 2017 (XINHUA)

The press center of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) holds a press conference on pursuing green development and building beautiful China, in Beijing, capital of China, October 23, 2017.

Chinese Minister of Environmental Protection Li Ganjie, and Yang Weimin, Deputy Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs attended the press conference and answered questions from Chinese and foreign journalists.

Unprecedented efforts made to prevent and control pollution

War has been declared on pollution with the State Council's action plan on prevention and control of air, water and soil pollution.

Li Ganjie, Minister of Environmental Protection said the law enforcement supervision in China is stronger than ever before, adding that comprehensive environmental improvement projects have been carried out in more than 11,000 villages, benefiting 190 million villagers.

The environment in China has been improving at an "unprecedented pace," Li said. Thanks to the progress achieved in major ecological conservation and restoration projects, ecological systems have been functioning better, Li added.

Prioritizing the ecological environment

China has achieved fast economic growth over the past years of reform and opening up, but the ecological environment has become a weakness that impedes China's development and public well-being. Improvement of the ecological environment calls for not only more effort, but more importantly a reform of the system.

Yang Weimin, Deputy Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs said the CPC Central Committee has given top priority to ecological environment systematic reform.

Yang said of the 38 meetings convened by the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, 20 meetings discussed such reform, and 48 specific measures have been discussed. The 3rd, 4th and 5th plenary sessions set 37 tasks for the reform, among which 24 have been finished, nine partly finished, and four are underway. These sessions issued 84 important documents on deepening the reform, Yang added.

(CGTN October 22, 2017)