Vice Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration Wang Jirong called the program China's latest effort to implement the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depleting Substances.

The program targets industrial enterprises that traditionally use ozone-depleting substances as cleaning agents during production.

Ten industrial sectors are included--electronics, post and telecommunications, aerospace, aviation, textiles, machinery, medical appliances, automobile and precision instruments.

Of China's enterprises using ozone-depleting substances, about half are in the above-mentioned sectors.

The program is expected to finish by late 2009, said Wang at a national conference on ozone-depletion substances.

Carbon tetrachloride (CTC) use will be banned after 2004. The production and consumption of the other two major ozone-depleting cleaning agents in China - CFC-113 (a kind of chlorofluorocarbon) and chlorothene Nu - will be completely banned by the end of the program.

All of them will be gradually replaced by substances that do not hurt the ozone layer and the environment, said Wang.

Applying only to nations that ratify it, the Montreal Protocol on Ozone-Depleting Substances was initiated by 13 developed countries in 1989.

Since then, over 170 countries have ratified it or its Vienna Convention, making the protocol a great protector of the earth's thinning ozone layer.

China approved the protocol in 1991. Since then, it has cut its production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances by 50,000 tons. This year it has also met the target control levels for the production and use of major chlorofluorocarbons.

Supported by the multilateral fund from the protocol, China completed in early 1999 two years of research needed to completely replace ozone-depleting cleaning agents.

Last March, the multilateral fund of the protocol approved China's action program and donated US$5.2 million to it.

(China Daily)