6) We need to set up a mechanism to ensure stable growth of investment in rural areas. We will promote improvement in the pattern of investment in rural programs and set up a mechanism for coordinating investment programs and plans and for communication among relevant departments to improve the management of investment.

3. We need to work hard to reduce energy consumption and pollution emission, strengthen environmental protection, conserve land and use land more intensively.

To attain a reduction in energy consumption per unit of GDP of about 20% and emission of major pollutants of 10%, within a period of five years as required in the Outline of the 11th Five-Year Plan, we must forge ahead in spite of difficulties, adopt more effective measures and work even harder. We must make energy saving, decreased energy consumption, reduced emission of pollutants and conservation and intensive use of land the breakthrough point and main fulcrum for accelerating economic restructuring and changing the pattern of economic growth. We will energetically develop the service and high-tech industries, encourage the use of modern technology to transform traditional industries, provide guidance for enterprise mergers and reorganizations, promptly eliminate backward production facilities that cannot meet the requirements for market access in industries that consume large quantities of energy or seriously pollute the environment and promote more efficient development. At the same time, we must do a good job in the following eight areas.

1) We need to implement an accountability system. We need to strictly adhere to a responsibility system for meeting targets for energy conservation and consumption reduction and reduction of pollutant emission, promptly set up a unified, scientific system of statistical indicators and a monitoring system for reducing energy consumption and pollutant emission, and improve the performance assessment mechanism for the same purpose.

2) We need to focus on key areas. We will use funds from both central and local government budgets to carry out ten major state energy conservation projects including those to upgrade low-efficiency coal-fired boilers (furnaces), to develop district combined heating & power facilities, to utilize by-product heat and pressure, to conserve petroleum and find petroleum substitutes and to promote a wider use of environment-friendly lighting in key industries and areas such as steel, non-ferrous metals, power, petroleum and petrochemicals, chemicals and building materials. We will strengthen energy conservation management in key enterprises that each burn more than 10,000 tons of standard coal annually, launch a campaign to save energy in about 1,000 large enterprises with extremely high-energy consumption, tighten energy auditing, and step up efforts to develop and promote the use of major energy-saving technologies that have great potential for saving energy and can be widely applied in highly energy-consuming industries.

3) We need to attack the roots of the problem. We will follow an energy-saving evaluation and examination system for fixed asset investment projects and make energy efficiency a mandatory criterion in project examination, approval and development. We will adopt minimum energy efficiency standards for products whose manufacture is high in energy consumption, work out and implement quotas of energy consumption in production, set up a system of energy consumption limits for public buildings and expand the scope of mandatory energy efficiency labeling. We will improve power generation and distribution and accelerate efforts to encourage larger thermal power plants and discourage smaller ones by shutting down small thermal power generating units with a total power generating capacity of 10 million kilowatts. We will require all new thermal power plants to install desulphurization equipment, issue a plan for controlling sulfur dioxide emission of coal-fired power plants and carry out the trial of exclusive distribution of desulphurization equipment. We will work hard to close down backward iron foundries with total production capacity of 30 million tons and backward steel mills with total production capacity of 35 million tons.