The National Territorial Plan 2016-2030
Press Conference Script
Moderator: Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to attend the press conference held by the State Council Information Office. Recently, the State Council issued The National Territorial Plan 2016-2030, the first strategic, comprehensive and basic plan for territorial development and preservation. This document is significant to the improvement of territorial and spatial governance capacity. Today, we are very honored to invite Mr. Jiang Daming, Minister of Land and Resources, Mr. Zhao Long, Vice Minister of Land and Resources , Mr. Liu Sushe from the National Development and Reform Commission to brief you about this document and take questions from the press. Now, I’d like to invite Mr. Jiang to give us the briefing.
Ministry of Land and Resources: Dear friends from the press, good morning.
Let me begin by expressing my appreciation to you for your attention and support to the work of land and resources. Now please allow me to take this opportunity to brief you about The National Territorial Plan 2016-2030.
I. Background and compiling process
Territory is the spatial carrier and material basis of ecological progress. Since the reform and opening-up policy was introduced, China has made impressive progress in its territorial development. China’s relatively limited resource endowment has supported its rapid growth in the past 30-plus years. Now, China is in the final stage of completing the building of initially prosperous society when the Chinese economy has entered the New Normal and the supply-side structural reform has accelerated. We face many new conditions, conflicts, and challenges in territorial development and protection. Some places in China suffer from imbalance in territorial development, serious environmental pollution, growing restriction by resources, and degrading ecological system.
Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as its core has reaffirmed its commitment to ecological progress. It has embraced the philosophy of innovated, balanced, green, open and shared development; established the principle of balancing population, resources and the environment as well as economic, social and ecological benefits; adopted a holistic approach to territorial spatial development and preservation; built sound urban, agricultural and ecological security landscapes; established rational space for work, living and ecology; and promoted harmonious coexistence between human beings and nature.
In order to implement decisions by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on promoting ecological progress, territorial spatial development and preservation, approved by the State Council, the Ministry of Land and Resources and the National Development and Reform Commission served as the leading ministries and worked with other 28 central government departments to compile this document in line with the principles of “organization by government, leading role of experts, cross-departmental cooperation, public participation and well-informed decisions”. During the drafting process, we summed up the experience from local pilot programs; organized more than 30 research institutes; conducted research on 48 major issues; and fully incorporated advices from various provincial governments, other central government departments, and experts and scholars. With the approval of Premier Li Keqiang, the Plan was formally issued by the State Council on January 3 this year.
II. Significance
The National Territorial Plan 2016-2030 is China’s first strategic, comprehensive and basic national plan for territorial development and protection, covering all China’s land and maritime territory (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan this time). The Plan will guide and regulate all activities related to territorial spatial development, preservation and treatment, and will lead and coordinate related territorial spatial sub-plan.
The Plan will implement the new concept, thinking and strategy of governance by the CPC Central Committee. In line with the overall arrangements on economic, political, cultural, social and ecological progress as well as the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy, the Plan will set up the overall and coordinated arrangements on territorial spatial development, resource and environmental protection, integrated territorial treatment and supporting system establishment. The compilation and implementation of the Plan is arranged in a coordinated way. All these efforts can help optimize distribution of territorial spatial development and increase overall competitiveness and comprehensive national strength; help promote the balanced development between urban and rural areas and make territorial development more coordinated; help increase the availability of energy and resources and achieve sustainable economic and social development; help protect and improve the ecological environment and protect territorial ecological security; and help build a reasonable spatial planning system at an early date, improve territorial spatial development and preservation system, and provide important support and basic guarantee to the building of beautiful China and the realization of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
III. Main contents
The Plan has ten chapters, covering four areas:
First, it has specified the guidelines, basic principles and main objectives in territorial development, preservation and treatment. The document stresses faster shift in the ways of territorial development and utilization, comprehensive improvement in the quality and efficiency of territorial development, tougher regulation on purposes of territorial space and the establishment of a system for territorial spatial development and preservation. It has made clear that six principles must be followed and six major objectives should be introduced in order to move fast to build secure, harmonious, open, coordinated, competitive and sustainable beautiful territory.
Second, it has established an integrated pattern featuring cohesive territorial development, classified preservation and comprehensive treatment. Based on “the four plates” and leaded by “the three strategies”, focusing on national key development areas and areas for optimal development, the Plan envisages establishment of important axes, belts and cohesion zones for territorial development and the cohesive territorial development featuring polycentric network. On the basis of assessment outcomes of resource and environmental bearing capacity, the Plan has introduced an all-encompassing territorial preservation pattern featuring five categories of resource and environmental protection and three levels of protection. According to this Plan, we will conduct comprehensive territorial treatment focusing on main urban areas, rural areas, key ecological functional zones, areas with large-scale mineral exploitation, coastal belts and islands in the sea so as to set up a comprehensive territorial treatment pattern featuring four areas and one belt.
Third, it has improved the territorial spatial development and preservation system by means of strengthening land use control. The Plan has set up “survival line”, “ecological line” and “support line”, defined eleven compulsory or anticipated indicators such as arable land coverage, total water consumption, territorial development intensity, good quality waters in key river basins, promoted institutional innovation, and improved supporting policies.
Fourth, centered on the main objective—building beautiful territory, the Plan has assigned a series of major tasks for cohesive development, classified preservation, comprehensive treatment, inter-connected development and building of supporting system.
IV. Implementation
As required by the State Council, we will establish a cross-agency communication and consultation mechanism for the implementation of the Plan to address the major issues concerning territorial development, preservation and treatment. Local governments at all levels should establish and improve their working mechanisms, fully implement the tasks and realize the objectives in the Plan. We will establish a performance appraisal system, take the implementation to meet the requirement of State Land Supervision to provincial government. In the meanwhile, a system for public participation will be established and improved in order to create an enabling environment for territorial development and utilization in line with laws and regulations. We will soon make specific arrangements on the implementation of this Plan and provincial territorial planning.