Beijing's well-known cultural heritage will be properly protected while the city is working for its modernization, sources at a meeting on city planning and construction said Thursday.

Plans on protecting the city's cultural heritage and constructing a Central Business District (CBD) in the downtown area were passed in principle by the local government Thursday, for implementation later.

Jia Qinglin, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, said that balancing the protection of historical sites with modernization is an unavoidable task for the city's future development.

The local government has taken measures in recent years to protect cultural and historical sites, such as the palaces constructed in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, ancient watercourses and traditional courtyard houses.

Government sources say that laws and regulations have been formulated and plans made to better protect the city's traditional sites from being affected by a rash modernization scheme.

The CBD will be located outside the third-ring road in the east part of Beijing, distancing from ancient city sites to avoid conflicts between modernization and protection of the cultural heritage.

(Xinhua News Agency April 4, 2002)