We will strengthen our grain production capability and improve the country's food security. The acreage sown to grain must be expanded. We will work hard to increase the yield per unit area and ensure that grain output totals 455 billion kilograms this year. We will practice the most stringent possible system for protecting farmland. We will reform the way land is expropriated and requisitioned and the mechanism of compensating for its expropriation and requisition. The transformation of farmland to non-agricultural purposes will be planned and managed strictly. We will launch a project to industrialize production of high-quality grains, and establish a group of state production centers concentrated in major grain producing areas to produce high-quality and special grain crops. Investment will be increased to develop improved crop strains, promote wider application of advanced agricultural techniques, prevent and control plant diseases and pests, improve irrigated areas, develop dry farming and water-saving irrigation, turn hillsides into terraced fields and build silt trappers. Improvement of low- and medium-yield farmland will be accelerated. Major grain consumption areas will also be obligated to protect their primary farmland to maintain necessary grain production capacity and ensure adequate local grain reserves.

We will speed up construction on key bond-financed projects. The preparatory work for laying the track on the Qinghai-Tibet railway line will be basically completed in 2004, and the cumulative length of laid track will reach 647 kilometers. We will accelerate the preliminary work on the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and meet the schedule and quality standards for the construction under way. The entire West-to-East Natural Gas Piping Project will be put into commercial operation. An additional power-generating capacity of 8.2 million KW will go on line in the West-to-East Electricity Transmission Project. Construction will begin this year on the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the second phase of the National Library of China project and the China Digital Library project. We will strengthen inspection, supervision and management of bond-financed projects to ensure more efficient use of the funds and the quality of these projects.