China Education Television:

We noticed that there is a chapter in the white paper explaining the "green territorial configuration." Optimizing the development and protection of territorial space is an important part of it. What are the considerations in leveraging the role of territorial space planning to promote the building of a green territorial configuration? Thank you.

Liu Guohong:

Thank you for your question. A country's territorial space is the carrier for green development. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed the need to plan economic and social development from the perspective of harmonious co-existence between man and nature. He said that we should, acting on the principles of prioritizing resource conservation and environmental protection and letting nature restore itself, develop spatial layouts, industrial structures, and ways of work and life that help conserve resources and protect the environment. The Ministry of Natural Resources has fully followed through on the important instructions made by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Efforts have been made to integrate different plans into a single master plan for territorial space development, design sound territorial space planning, which can be summarized into "five levels, three types", and put them into effect to promote the building of a green territorial configuration. Our works are mainly in three aspects, which are as follows:

The first is coordinating development and security, and supporting high-quality development while safeguarding the bottom line of resource security. For food security, priority has been given to drawing red lines for the protection of farmland and permanent basic cropland. The task of retaining at least 124.33 million hectares of farmland area will remain unchanged from 2021 to 2035. To guard the natural ecological security boundary, ecological conservation red lines have been established, and more than 30% of China's total land area is now under the protection of the red lines. To curb the expansion of urban sprawl, we have strictly controlled boundaries for urban development. We have acted in accordance with the principle that the urban development area should not be 1.1 times larger than the existing land construction area in megacities, cities with net population reduction, and cities where per capita construction land exceeds national standards, and not be 1.3 times larger in other cities.

The second is coordinating protection and development, and optimizing the development of territorial space. We have implemented a functional zoning strategy. Based on natural and geographical patterns and the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, we have optimized the strategic layout of major agricultural production zones, key ecosystem service zones, and urbanized zones, coordinated the spatial layout of water conservancy, transportation, energy and other infrastructure, and worked to build a new multi-center, networked, open, and intensive territorial space development configuration. We have encouraged urban and rural areas to use idle construction land effectively, promote endogenous and intensive urban development, and build beautiful and harmonious countryside that is desirable to live and work in.

The third is coordinating conservation and restoration, and taking a holistic and systematic approach to conserving and improving mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts. We are taking coordinated steps to develop a national park-based nature reserve system, making overall deployments to protect and restore major ecosystems such as lands, rivers, lakes and oceans nationwide. We have launched large-scale and well-conceived greening programs, and carried out integrated protection, systematic restoration and comprehensive management of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts, so as to make the sky bluer, mountains lusher, waters clearer, the environment more beautiful, and the human-nature relationship more harmonious. As you may notice, not long ago, China's Shan-Shui Initiative was selected as one of the U.N.'s first 10 World Restoration Flagships, offering China's wisdom, solutions and strength for global biodiversity protection.

The report to the 20th CPC National Congress proposed developing a regional economic layout and territorial space system that complement each other's strengths and promote high-quality development; improving the functional zoning system and the development of territorial space; and advancing the Beautiful China Initiative and enhancing diversity, stability and sustainability in our ecosystems. We will fully implement the guiding principles of the 20th CPC National Congress, continue to deepen coordination in the three respects as mentioned earlier, constantly improve the territorial space planning system, and strictly implement the regulation system for the use of territorial space, so as to better advance high-quality development and achieve a high level of security. Thank you.