The Central Government held working meeting on population, natural resources and environment   On 13 March 1999, the Working Meeting on Population, Natural Resources and Environment of the Central Government was held in Beijing. Mr. Jiang Zeming, General-Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and President of China chaired the meeting and delivered an important speech at the meeting. President Jiang pointed out that the issue of population, natural resources and environment is systematic engineering with internal relations. The communist committees and governments at various levels should enhance the leadership, coordinate the relevant departments and mobilize the whole society so as to achieve the targets of the systematic work. The Central Government has emphasized over and over that the head of the Communist Party Committees and the governments at various levels should be responsible for the overall work of population, natural resources and environment as well as the implementation and achievements of the work. Annual check will be conducted within the term of the leaders and a summary of the work should be submitted when the leaders leave their posts. As to those who neglect their duties, investigations will be conducted so as to find out the persons to be blamed.

In 1999, Chinese government enhanced the strategic adjustment of the economic structure, continued to implement active financial policies so as to promote the domestic demands, increased the investment in the urban infra-structure construction and environmental protection, stuck to the pollution prevention and ecological protection policies and enhanced comprehensive environmental treatment. The total pollutant discharge amount was controlled effectively. Great achievements were made concerning the attainment discharge of industrial pollution sources and the functional attainment of environmental quality in key cities. As to the water pollution treatment in Dianchi Lake and Chaohu Lake, tasks of certain stages were finished. Preliminary achievements were made in the atmospheric pollution prevention in Beijing. The degradation trend of the environmental pollution in the whole country was basically controlled on the whole and the environmental quality in some areas and cities was improved to certain extent. The statistics and analysis of the environmental monitoring results show that the environmental situation in the whole country is still rather severe. The discharge amount of the pollutants is quite large; the pollution level is still rather high; the environmental quality in some areas is keeping on degrading; the water, air, noise, soil environmental pollution in lots of cities is still rather serious and the rural environmental quality has decreased. The ecological degradation has not yet been controlled in an effective way and the ecological destruction in some areas is becoming worse.