China seeks sustainable development: Chinese lawmaker

China is promoting a scientific approach of development, believing economic development must go along with environmental protection, and quality-oriented development is better than quantity-oriented one, a Chinese lawmaker said in Vientiane Tuesday.

"We have to pay attention to economic growth and also social development ... We have to build a resource-saving and energy- saving society in China," Wang Yingfan, vice chairman of the foreign affairs committee under the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, said at a meeting between China and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO) at the second day of the 26th AIPO General Assembly, held in Laos for the first time.

To maintain high growth rates, China will keep on raising energy efficiency and tapping renewable resources, as well as spending more on environmental protection, he said, noting that China spends some 1.4 percent of its gross domestic product, the level of many developed countries, in the field.

"It's not really fair that some people say oil prices increase mainly because of China's consumption," he said, noting the country's oil import accounts for only 7 percent of the world's total, compared with the figures of 27 percent of the United States and 11 percent of Japan.

On Tuesday, lawmakers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its observers centered their discussions on topics of mutual concern, including anti-terrorism and sea piracy, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the East Asian Summit, regional economic cooperation, trade liberalization, tourism, environmental issues, natural disaster management, educational and cultural cooperation, and technology transfer.

The AIPO's observers include Australia, Canada, China, the European Parliament, Japan, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia and South Korea.

The four-day assembly will adopt a joint communique and around 17 resolutions on Thursday. The next assembly will be held in the Philippines in September 2006.

AIPO was initiated by the Indonesian House of Representatives in 1974, and officially set up three years later by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The organization embraced Vietnam in 1995, Laos in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999.

Two other ASEAN members, Brunei and Myanmar, are accredited as the AIPO's special observers sine they have no legislatures. They engage in full activities of the organization.

Source: Xinhua