advance the development of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. We will continue to negotiate investment and trade agreements with relevant countries and regions.
China is a responsible country. We have always striven to honor the commitments we have made, and we will firmly defend our due rights and interests.
7. Effectively strengthening environmental protection
Faster progress in work to improve the environment, particularly air quality, is what people are desperately hoping for, and is critical to sustainable development. We must adopt well-designed policies, tackle both symptoms and root causes, and take tough steps to make the grade in responding to the people.
We will make our skies blue again.
This year, we will see that sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions are both cut by 3 percent and that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) density in key areas falls markedly.
First, we will work faster to address pollution caused by coal burning. We will take comprehensive steps to reduce non-centralized coal burning operations, promote clean winter heating in the northern region, replace the use of coal with electricity and natural gas in more than 3 million households, and shut down all small coal-fired furnaces in established districts of cities at the prefectural level and above.
We will step up work on upgrading coal-fired power plants to achieve ultra-low emissions and energy conservation. Upgrading should be completed this year in the eastern region, next year in the central region, and by 2020 in the western region. We will act quickly to improve our mechanisms and technologies, enabling us to prioritize the integration of renewable energy sources into the electric grid and effectively address wasted hydro-, wind- and solar-power generation capacities. We will also accelerate straw recycling.
Second, we will take a full range of measures to tackle the sources of pollution. We will take focused actions to curb pollution in key industries. All key sources of industrial pollution will be placed under round-the-clock online monitoring. We will set a clear deadline by which enterprises must meet required discharge standards, and take resolute law-based action to close down all those that still fail to meet standards after the deadline.
Third, we will strengthen control over exhaust emitted by motor vehicles. We
31
