On July 17, Zhou Jian, the Administration's Vice Minister met with Mr. Mario Amano, the visiting Deputy Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at SEPA headquarters. Both sides exchanged views on responses to climate change, environmental performance assessment, improvement of energy efficiency and biodiversity.

At first, Mr. Zhou introduced China's environmental protection work. China faces rather sharp and complicated environmental problems as the largest developing nation in the world, he said. In a bid to solve the conflict between rapid economic growth and the pressures on resources and environment, the government readjusted the environmental protection strategies in recent days and tried to promote the historical transformations of green efforts by paying attention to optimizing economic growth through environmental protection, upgrading the environmental protection work, and balancing the development of economy, society, and the nature. To this end, in the 11^th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development, the country set up specific targets to save energy and reduce the emissions of pollutants, and worked out many policy measures to speed up the achievement of targets. Currently the measures gradually have taken effect.

SEPA has been in good ties with OECD for years, and thanks to the concerted efforts, both sides have benefited greatly from the cooperation in the environment field, said Mr. Zhou. He was glad to witness the conclusion of MOU for bilateral cooperation, and from now on, the Administration would be more actively to communicate and cooperate with the Organization, and contribute to all areas related to environmental protection.

Mr. Amano appreciated the importance given by SEPA to the cooperation with OECD. He hoped that both sides would keep close contacts, constantly expand and deepen bilateral cooperation so as to achieve more in the environment field.