As one of the developing countries which has been affected by climate changes, China takes the issue of climate change very seriously. Let me share with you an example. In 1972 the First UN Conference on Human Environment was held in Stockholm of Sweden. Although China was undergoing the Cultural Revolution during that year, we still sent a delegation to attend the conference and we still have a vivid memory of the contribution that Stockholm and Sweden as a whole have made to improve human environment and we applaud your efforts.

I also remember that one of the members of the Chinese delegation to the Stockholm 1972 Conference years later served as Director of the State Administration for Environmental Protection and later worked in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Qu Geping. He also got an award from the United Nations for his efforts in protecting environment.

China follows the strategy of sustainable development. In our 11th Five-Year Plan on National Economic and Social Development, we set the targets of putting the emissions of green house gases under control and reducing energy consumption per- unit GDP by 20 percent. These goals, if attained, will be China's contribution to resolving the issue of global climate change.

Understanding difficulties of African friends

The first sentence of the Charter of the United States spelt out two fundamental principles that are closely related to everybody's lives, the first one being equality between men and women and the second being equality among all countries, big or small.

China knows its national conditions best. We know that we are the biggest developing country. We know that we still face quite a few difficulties and challenges. That is why we must take strengthening solidarity and cooperation with all other developing countries as the fundamental of all our diplomatic efforts.

We believe that treating each other as equals should not be diplomatic rhetoric. We should translate into concrete actions. That is what we are doing now. Before paying state visits to the eight African countries, President Hu Jintao gave us instruction that we need to put ourselves in the shoes of those African friends to feel what their difficulties are and carry out friendly consultation with them to help them generate capability for achieving independent development and help them to improve the well-being of the people in those countries through cooperation of mutual benefit. During his visits to African countries, Premier Wen Jiabao also reminded us that we need to carry forward the fine Chinese tradition of being kind-hearted to people. We must not forget under whatever circumstances what kind of help and good things other people have provided us or done for us, but we can forget what good things we have done to help others.

The warmest and most sincere welcome President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao received in those African countries they visited came from the people of these African countries. Those people were waving to the Chinese leaders with every sincerity and with their sweat drops under the sunlight. Although they had to withstand such harsh and hot weather, I saw the sincere smiles on faces of those African people and it makes me feel that they are more valuable and more sincere than any political rhetoric that a politician may make. I met a dozen African people who once suffered from malaria but were cured with anti-malaria drugs with Chinese intellectual property rights. They held my hands and told me that "our lives were saved by the Chinese people!" I believe they speak from their hearts.

China to study legislation on consular protection for overseas Chinese

At present, there are more than 4,800 staff members working in the Chinese Foreign Ministry and more than 240 overseas missions, who are all responsible for providing consular protection for lawful rights and interests of Chinese nationals and corporations abroad directly or indirectly.

The number of overseas Chinese is increasing sharply with China's development. According to the latest statistics, about 675,000 Chinese currently work overseas. There are about 40,000 people engaging in the industry of oceanic fishing and about 150,000 working on foreign ships. There are more than 10,000 Chinese enterprises have set up businesses in foreign countries. The number of Chinese people going overseas as tourists, to visit families and to study is also increasing year after year. Currently, 132 out of more than 190 countries have been approved tourism destinations for Chinese citizens.

In 2006, Chinese citizens paid 34.52 million visits abroad. According to an estimation by the World Tourism Council, this figure will rise to 100 million by 2020. The Chinese Foreign Ministries as well as its overseas embassies and consulates have handled more than 30,000 consular cases of various kinds in the past year, including the killing of three Chinese company employees in a terrorist attack in Pakistan, the major traffic accident of a Hong Kong tourist group in Egypt and the kidnapping of Chinese engineers by militants in Nigeria on two occasions. China also evacuated overseas Chinese from the Solomon Islands, East Timor, Lebanon and Tonga.

In providing consular protection services, we will follow the policy of putting people first and doing diplomatic work in the interests of the people. Our specific measures include: first, we will bring into full play the role of the inter-agency coordination mechanism led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs aimed at protecting safety and security of overseas Chinese citizens and institutions; second, we will deepen our preventive consular protection efforts, third, we will further disseminate the information and knowledge about consular protection to the general public, fourth, we publish a guide on overseas consular protection and services to provide timely consular services; fifth, in event of serious cases, the ministry will make immediate representations and send special representatives or taskforces to the spot to safeguard the lawful rights of Chinese citizens; and last but not least, we will listen to the motions and proposals from NPC deputies and CPPCC members to study legislation on better consular protection services for overseas Chinese to standardize our efforts on this front.