China marked the 34th World Earth Day with activities held in downtown Beijing on Tuesday, under a theme of "treat the earth better, better protect resources."

An official from the Ministry of Land and Resources said at an Earth Day ceremony that China's variety of resources are being used extensively with a low utilizing rate and the ecological environment has deteriorated due to the short-sightedness of some people who have only attached importance to economic development to the neglect of environmental protection.

Therefore, the official said, the theme of "treat the earth better, better protect resources" was set forth by the Chinese government in an attempt to help people deal with the relationship between resources exploitation and environmental protection in a balanced approach.

China is a developing and populous country with comparatively limited resources. With the rapid economic growth, the resources shortage will be intensified.

China's arable acreage is shrinking, in 2002 reducing by 1.32 percent from 2001 to 125.9 million hectares. The per-capita farmland area was merely 0.097 hectares in China, making up less than 50 percent of the world's average level.

In addition, China is a global major mining resources production and consumption nation. But with a big population and rapid economic development, the country now suffers a shortage of mining resources.

Its water resources are also in great shortage as the country has for a long time had to supply drinking water to its 1.3 billion people, one fifth of the world's whole population, with merely eight percent of the world's total freshwater resources. And both agriculture and urban areas are contending for water consumption.

(Xinhua News Agency April 22, 2003)