Li Zhenjing, from the State Development and Reform Commission's Macro-Economic Research Institute, said on Sunday that China should be able to build a recycling, or circular, economy in 50 years' time in which people and nature co-exist in harmony.

According to a report by the institute, in that time the main indices of a circular economy, such as productivity of resources and output coefficient, environment, and sustainable development, should reach advanced levels.

In the past decade, China has seen fast economic growth coupled with environmental and energy crises.

This has prompted a rethink of the mode of economic development, which is running at the expense of the environment and high energy resource consumption. A circular economy would stress clean production and process industrial pollutants more efficiently.

Li said that to achieve this goal, sufficient legal and regulatory systems must be developed in the next five years.

(Xinhua News Agency April 11, 2005)