Jia Qinglin, secretary of Beijing municipal Party committee, thinks that the construction of the city will draw more attention to the ecological improvements. Mayor Liu Qi agrees with him.

Beijing government took a series of actions to control the air pollution. Comparing to 1998, the emission of SO2, nitrogen oxides, CO, and ASP dropped 41%, 17%, 7%, and 18% respectively. The percentage of days with air quality of Grade II or better increased. It was 27.4% in 1998, 31.2% in 1999, and over 45% in 2000. The air quality will be improved at Grade II or better on 50% of the days this year.

Beijing planned to plant 240 square kilometers of green separation belts. About 40 square kilometers was completed in the past years. In order to quicken its construction, Beijing government decided to finish the 10 years' work within 3 years.

Since the late 1980s, Beijing has started to probe the modification of old and dangerous housing. Since the 1990s, 4.36 million square meters of old houses have been torn down and 200,000 residents have been moved into new houses. The construction of 150 residential zones has started and 1,236 square meters of houses on 48 zones were completed. The total investment of old and dangerous housing modification was over RMB40 billion. The old and dangerous housing modification goal in the 10th five-year plan is 3.03 million square meters in the outskirts of Beijing...