STORY: China's total amount of arable land grows for 2 consecutive years: minister
DATELINE: July 11, 2023
LENGTH: 00:01:01
LOCATION: Beijing
CATEGORY: ENVIRONMENT

SHOTLIST:
1. SOUNDBITE (Chinese/English): WANG GUANGHUA, China's Minister of Natural Resources

STORYLINE:

China's Minister of Natural Resources Wang Guanghua said in a press conference held in Beijing on Tuesday that China's total amount of arable land has grown for two consecutive years.

SOUNDBITE (Chinese/English): WANG GUANGHUA, China's Minister of Natural Resources
"We earnestly ensured the security of food, energy, resources, industrial chains, and supply chains. To ensure a new development paradigm that is guarded by new security architecture, on food security, we saw that all the occupied arable land be compensated steadily and orderly. We froze the additional arable land quota for illegal occupation of arable land and promoted the stability of its total amount. We continued to carry out stringent law enforcement inspections for the protection of arable land. We publicly addressed major cases of illegal occupation. In the first half of this year, the number of such cases and the area of illegally occupied land decreased by 64 percent and 80.5 percent respectively year on year. Our total amount of arable land has grown for two consecutive years."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Beijing.
(XHTV)