China's Vice Finance Minister Zhu Zhigang said on the 6th that going forward, China will further readjust the structure of its governmental investments, with focus shifting from cities to villages, from economic build-up to acceleration of social harmonious expansion, from basic infrastructural construction to societal public works, habitat construction and environmental protection.

Zhu said that finding more resources will work hand in hand with conservation of resources to solve the energy bottlenecks that have constrained economic growth. China needs to study and establish a system for its fiscal and tax policies and strongly support research, development and widespread application of renewable energies such as bio-energy resources, solar energy and wind power to reduce its dependency on petroleum energy.

At the same time, China needs to enact pro-environmental and energy-friendly fiscal and tax policies and quickly perfect pollution rights and trading test cases to set up appropriate package measures to realize compensation for pollution rights and transfers. China should push for full-scale compensation policies for mining rights and gradually establish management of wildlife habitat surrounding mining sites and restore accountability.

Zhu also requests that local fiscal agencies quickly apply oil price rebates to benefit the people and ensure that reform in oil pricing will be implemented smoothly. At present, the central government has passed on more than 8 billion RMB (US$1 billion) to various localities for rebates to the fishery, forestry, urban public transport and rural road transportation and taxi sectors.

At the meeting, Zhu also said that he would strive to do a better job in directly subsidizing grain farmers and expand aid to rural residents. In the most recent three years, the central government has given direct subsidies totaling 51.5 billion RMB to grain farmers.
 
Editor: Yan