Rapid economic growth, normally a cause for cheers, has caused China to fail in meeting some major Five-Year Plan targets, such as protecting arable land, conserving resources, and spending more on technological innovation.
These and other problems and bottlenecks are being discussed by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. It is the major advisory body to the National People's Congress.
According to the comprehensive 10th Five-Year (2001-2005) Plan, the total amount of cultivated land should remain no less than 128 million hectares by the end of 2005.
But China registered 122.44 million hectares of cropland by 2004, and the figure continued to shrink in 2005, said the Ministry of Land and Resources.
China has been suffering a chronic insufficiency of natural resources due to its huge population of 1.3 billion. Loss of arable land, mainly due to massive modern construction and urbanization, is a key factor hampering sound economic development.
Greater efforts should be made to save cultivated land from construction projects and increase the capacity of cropland, said Yang Bangjie, deputy director of the Planning and Research Institute of the agriculture ministry.
Yang is also a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the CPPCC.
China's top advisory body opened its annual session in Beijing yesterday.
The second unfulfilled task was spending on research and scientific development, which should account for over 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product by 2005.
However, the investment accounted for 1.3 percent of GDP by 2005, showing that enterprises are not enthusiastic in innovation spending, said Guo Guoqing, a commerce professor with Beijing-based People's University and CPPCC official.
"It has been a custom for Chinese enterprises to import technologies for efficiency and low cost, but they will always lag behind their competitors by doing so," said Nan Cunhui, an entrepreneur and a deputy of the National People's Congress, China's legislature.
It is acceptable to buy advanced technologies during the initial stage of market economy, but insufficient spending in technological innovation will never change China's passive position in world competition, Nan said.
China also failed to meet its environmental protection target over the past five years, which set a 10-percent decrease for the volume of major pollutant discharges from 2000.
China is one of the world's most wasteful users of natural resources, according to a survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
It said China has not changed its economic growth model of intensive use of natural resources and energies.
(Xinhua)