"The redline of 120 million hectares of arable land cannot be crossed, no matter what."

Xu Shaoshi, talking tough on National Land Day on June 25 when he called for a conservative land use in the country

"Since per-capita construction land demand in urban areas is less than that in the countryside, urbanization should never proceed at the cost of loss of farmland."

Liu Yunzhou, Deputy Director of the China Land Society

"I have read similar reports on environment and health many times, released by varied research institutes. Every time, the figures are different."

Zhou Jian, Vice Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration, questioning a World Bank report on the lack of a common scientific methodology when concluding that

pollution has caused large premature deaths in China

"Carbon dioxide absorbed by China's forests has risen from 470 million tons in 1990 to more than 500 million tons currently."

Zhu Lieke, Deputy Director of the State Forestry Administration, citing Chinese experts' estimates at a press conference in Beijing on July 17. He revealed that China's forest area has maintained the fastest annual growth rate in the world at 1.2 percent, against a 0.2-percent shrinkage of world forests

"Grassroots organizations committed to HIV/AIDS response and control are better received than the government by high-risk groups and are an

indispensable force in the war against the deadly disease."

Chinese Vice Minister of Health Wang Longde, pledging an

all-inclusive anti-AIDS campaign on July 17 when he received a UNAIDS award acknowledging his leadership in China's fight against the disease

"If global consumer demand remains then Chinese exports will grow. There is not a lot that government policy can do about that."

Qu Hongbin, a senior economist at HSBC in Hong Kong,

predicting China's astonishingly high trade surplus will expand through the rest of the year due to huge global demand

for Chinese goods

"It wants to revise the rules of the game in the Euro-Atlantic area, written when Russia was weak."

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Moscow-based journal Russia

in Global Affairs, commenting on Russia's July 14 decision to suspend observance of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe arms control treaty, due to what the Kremlin said are "exceptional circumstances...broaching on the security of the Russian Federation"

"Our commitment to work with the American government in general and the Bush administration in particular

is resolute."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, telling BBC Television on July 15 that the United States is still Britain's number one ally, amid speculation that London may distance itself from Washington over Iraq