State Council Information Office

“ China is a major trading nation, and the quickened development of its transport provides a strong basis for building a new multi-dimensional structure of opening up and for enhancing China's competitiveness internationally. An important pillar for developing an export-oriented economy, China's maritime transport carries 90 percent of the country's foreign trade cargo, 98 percent of imported iron ore, 91 percent of imported crude oil, 92 percent of imported coal and 99 percent of imported grain. ”

“ VI. A Developing Culture That Values Ecological Awareness With advances in ecological conservation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, there has been a profound change in how people think and live. It has become widely recognized that protecting the environment means protecting our common home, with growing confidence in our eco-culture. ”

“ Driving the reform of transport to a deeper level. China will promote the further integration of different means of transport, and build a safe, convenient, efficient, green, and economical modern transport system. It will push ahead the market-oriented reform of its railways, deepen reforms of the investment and financing system, financial powers and expenditure responsibilities, and reform its airspace management system. ”

“ In addition to creating more material and cultural wealth to meet people's ever-increasing expectation of a better life, we need also to provide more quality ecological goods to meet people's ever-growing demands for a beautiful environment." Ecological progress on the Plateau in the new era is an important component of the Beautiful China initiative. The Chinese people are committed to making the Plateau an even more beautiful place, and to realizing harmonious coexistence between man and nature. ”

“ China has exhibited a strong competitive edge in the areas of railway building, transport projects and port operation. China transports one third of the total global maritime cargo. China's transport businesses are quickening their steps of "going global," and are transforming themselves from traditional labor export and project contracting entities to exporters of capital, technology, management and standards in the areas of transport infrastructure, port operation, ocean transport, transport equipment, ship inspection and maritime training. ”

“ The system of protected natural areas is an important means of management to protect biodiversity, preserve natural capital, maintain ecosystem services, and safeguard the wellbeing of Chinese people and the peoples of the world. Currently the protected natural areas on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are more and more composed of national parks than of nature reserves. ”

“ Technology Innovation and Application China leads the world in infrastructure construction. China's technologies for high-speed, alpine, plateau and heavy-haul railways have reached the world's advanced level, while high-speed railways have become a symbol of made-in-China and going-global products. Railway and highway construction technologies have overcome world-level geological challenges such as plateau permafrost, and expansive soil and desert. The construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and Qinghai-Tibet Railway has been completed and they have been opened to traffic. ”

“ Transport promotes development, exchanges bring about cooperation, and interconnectivity enables mutual benefits. The Chinese government will continue to improve the country's transport services so as to better serve China's socioeconomic development, and continue to strengthen cooperation in the area of transport with other countries so that they can take new opportunities and address challenges together to realize common development and prosperity. ”

“ In Tibet, passive solar housing is one of the first solar technologies introduced – it first appeared in Ali, Naqu and Lhasa in the 1980s. In addition to providing heating in winter, solar housing offers a better home environment and raises people's living standards. Energy conservation and environmental protection have become important factors for farmers and herdsmen on the Plateau to consider when they build houses. By the end of 2017 clean energy – mainly water power, solar energy and biogas – contributed 87 percent of the total installed capacity of electricity in Tibet Autonomous Region. ”

“ China implemented the contract responsibility system in railway operation; issued three policies for supporting highway development, namely, raising highway maintenance fee levied on highway users, collecting vehicle purchase tax, and building highways with loans and repaying the loans with tolls. Highway construction and water transport engineering projects started to adopt public bidding. Ports were the first to be opened up to the outside world, and sea transport was the first sector to go global. Civil aviation began to operate as an enterprise, and an air transport market took shape. ”

“ China has run pilot programs to carry out river basin-related environment monitoring and law enforcement, in order to strengthen supervision in different river basins and boost synergistic law enforcement, and to have unified planning, standards, assessment, monitoring, and law enforcement activities within the same basins. To assess the performance of officials in providing leadership to ecological conservation, China has set up an ecological goal appraisal system, and a supervisory system for auditing the natural resource assets when a relevant official leaves office. ”

“ Developing modern and efficient intercity transport. In urban agglomerations, China will build commuting circles of 1-2 hours between the central cities and between central and peripheral cities, and one-hour commuting circles between central cities and key peripheral towns. In urban areas it will vigorously develop intercity high-speed and suburban railways, and form a multi-level rail transit network. With priority focused on public transit, China will speed up the development of its urban rail and bus rapid transit, and other means of high-capacity public transport. ”

“ Traditional Tibetan medicine is a precious health treasure for people living on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and a major resource strength for the Plateau to develop a local specialty economy. To develop Tibetan medicine in a standard, modern and industrialized way, sci-tech departments have promoted research on and demonstration of key techniques, such as artificial planting and wild tending of Tibetan medicinal materials. They have carried out basic and applied research on Tibetan medicine, and kept improving the standards and the inspection and monitoring system of Tibetan medicine. ”

“ High-performance railway equipment technologies with proprietary intellectual property rights, represented by high-speed railways and high-power locomotives, have reached the advanced world level, with some of them leading the world. New-energy road transport equipment has realized preliminary industrialization. Feeder liners, general aviation aircraft and helicopters independently developed by China have been put into use, and the C919 airliner has rolled off the assembly line, making China one of the few countries capable of developing large airliners independently. ”

“ Efforts are made to maintain a good environment and a high degree of public satisfaction with ecological progress, and to achieve green development. An economic model featuring a circular economy, renewable energy, and distinctive industries, is forming on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, signaling an increasing level of green development. ”

“ China will improve its basic road network to cover more areas, speed up the construction of railways in the central and western areas, upgrade national and provincial highways and construction of congested sections, improve coastal and inland river transport facilities, strengthen the construction of roads and airports in rural areas, and connect the oil and gas pipelines in different areas. China will improve its postal services and network, and strengthen the infrastructure for express mail delivery. ”

“ The state has set red lines for ecological conservation, and put in force unified registration of natural resource rights, measures for managing natural and ecological space, and guidelines on reforming paid use of natural resource assets owned by the whole people. Different regulations and measures have been integrated for simplification, and pilot programs on state parks have been rolled out. China has improved its ecological compensation mechanism, and run trials to reform the ecological damage compensation system coordinated between cross-regional environmental protection institutions. ”

“ Today, in the area of transport infrastructure, except railway arteries and civil airports, all highways, bridges, ports, other types of railways and urban rail tracks are open to foreign capital as far as construction and operation is concerned. There is no limit on foreign capital for transport services such as highway freight, international container multimodal transport, and supporting services for international maritime transport. ”

“ In villages on the Plateau, a number of measures have been taken to improve the environment. By building modern-standard toilets, livestock pens, and housing, and undertaking domestic garbage collection and disposal, domestic wastewater collection and treatment, drinking water source protection, efficient crop stalk utilization, noise abatement, and human and livestock feces pollution control, the local governments have effectively addressed such problems as random dumping of garbage, illegal construction or extension of houses, unauthorized mining, and open-air burning of crop stalks. ”

“ In 2008 and 2013 respectively China launched two rounds of institutional reform to establish a large transport department, namely, the Ministry of Transport, which put the National Railways Administration, Civil Aviation Administration of China and State Postal Bureau under its management. All localities are promoting structural reform for comprehensive transport management, and quickening their pace in building a comprehensive transport system. ”

“ Under the Chinese ecosystem research network, observation stations for eight different ecosystems, including forest, grassland, farmland and desert, have been set up on the Plateau and surrounding areas, offering long-term located monitoring of changes of the Plateau ecosystem and thus revealing laws for and causes of changes in the ecosystem and environmental factors. With the network for monitoring and studying earth surface processes and environment in extremely cold areas of high altitude, researchers have performed continuous monitoring of environmental change on the Plateau surface. ”