Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government(4)

We made progress in conserving energy, reducing emissions, and protecting the ecological environment. We adopted and implemented the Comprehensive Work Plan for Conserving Energy and Reducing Emissions and the Work Plan for Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, and the Guidelines on Strengthening Key Environmental Protection Tasks. The installed power capacity using clean energy reached 290 million kW, an increase of 33.56 million kW over the previous year. We strengthened the development of major energy conservation and environmental protection projects. We increased daily sewage treatment capacity by 11 million tons in urban areas, and installed desulphurization systems on all new coal-fired power-generating units with a total capacity of over 50 million kW. We tightened controls over industries that are energy intensive, have high emissions or possess excess production capacity, and closed down outdated production facilities whose production capacity amounted to 150 million tons of cement, 31.22 million tons of iron, and 19.25 million tons of coke. We implemented the second phase of the project to protect virgin forests and raised related subsidies, carried out the policy of giving rewards and subsidies for grassland ecological conservation, and launched pilot projects to protect the ecological environment of lakes. And we planted 6.13 million hectares of trees.

We promoted the balanced development of regional economies. We thoroughly implemented the master strategy for regional development and the national plan for developing functional zones. We introduced preferential policies to promote the leapfrog development of Tibet and Xinjiang; and formulated and implemented a rural poverty alleviation and development program for the next ten years and an action plan to bring prosperity to border areas and the people there. As a result, regional development became better balanced, major economic indicators rose faster in the central and western regions and northeast China than the national average, and the eastern region accelerated industrial transformation and upgrading. China's urbanization level exceeded 50%, marking a historic change in the country's social structure. We completed reconstruction in Wenchuan, Sichuan, which was hit by a massive earthquake in 2008, and made major progress in disaster relief and reconstruction in Yushu, Qinghai; Zhugqu, Gansu; and Yingjiang, Yunnan.