The rust-belt northeast China should be taken as a community in setting future energy development plans, said a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission.

"This is an important step in carrying out the strategy of rejuvenating the northeast China," says Xu Yongsheng, deputy leader with the energy division of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Xu insisted that deciding the future energy development plans by taking the rust belt as a whole could avoid repeated construction and help improve efficiency.

Recently, local officials in charge of energy construction affairs from Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, and eastern Inner Mongolia were invited to sit together in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang, with the hope of compiling an overall energy development program for the rust belt region.

Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Autonomous Region, which constituted the old industrial base of New China, differ a great deal by the availability of natural resources.

Heilongjang is the most geologically blessed area of the four, with proven petroleum geological reserve accumulating to 5.67 billion tons which account for one quarter of the national total.

Its exploitable black gold is set at 568 million tons, about one quarter of the national total. But it has been suffering from problems regarding development of the one-off energy resources, including fewer in-depth processing projects, low capability of labor-intensive exploration.

Both Liaoning and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia have limited coal reserves, and Jilin, where the country's first automobile factory is housed, is rich in hydropower resources.

However, Liaoning has already felt the punch from the limited share of conventional energy resources and has had to rely more heavily on the outside regions to quench its growing energy thirst.

"The rust belt region can achieve a common prosperity and be turned into a new engine of economic growth in the country through stepping up cooperating, complementing and sharing resources among us neighboring areas," said Chen Yongchang, head of the macroeconomic specialists' panel of Heilongjiang Provincial Scientists Advisory Committee.

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2006)