Beijing: In a move to address the growing energy crunch, China has decided to emulate countries like India by altering its current industrial structure and increasing the size of its service sector.
China will improve energy conservation by increasing the proportion of the service sector in the economy, the State Council, the Chinese cabinet decided.
The fundamental way to curb rising energy demand was to alter the industrial structure, the cabinet noted.
China's roaring economic growth has been mainly driven by secondary industry, while services, consuming less energy and producing higher value, accounted for about 40 per cent last year, compared with more than 70 per cent in developed countries and 51.2 per cent in India.
China saw its gross domestic product grow by 10.9 per cent in the first half. The added value of the secondary industry rose by 13.2 per cent over the same period last year, and services were up by 9.4 per cent.
First-half energy consumption measured by 10,000 yuan of GDP per 1.43 tonnes of standard coal rose by 0.8 per cent over the same period last year, the highest rise in the past four years. China is the world's second largest energy consumer after the United States.
The key to better energy conservation was to adjust and improve the country's economic structure, Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Ma Kai was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
The NDRC calculated that if the added value of the service sector in the economy rose by one per cent, and the added value of the secondary industry fell by one percent, energy consumption will drop by one per cent.
If the added value of high-technology industries in the industrial sector rose by one per cent and that of high energy-consuming industries, such as chemicals, metallurgy and building materials, dropped by one per cent, energy consumption would be reduced by 1.3 per cent.
High-tech industries accounted for 10.3 per cent of the total added value of China's industrial sector last year.
The State Council asked provincial and local governments to transform their emphasis from industrial expansion and economic growth to strengthening the service sector and the improvement of the economic structure.
The statement said the government also required restrictions on the expansion of high-consumption industries and energy consumption as a standard in approval of projects.
The government set a goal to reduce energy consumption by 20 per cent during the five-year period from 2006 to 2010.
Comments
0 comment