A severe algae outbreak in Taihu, the third largest freshwater lake of the country, at the end of May this year triggered a scare after the sudden outbreak of the stenchy algae cut tap water supply to more than one million residents in Wuxi, a city in eastern Jiangsu Province.

    Hu's remarks aroused instant attention of delegates to the CPC congress and observers of China.

    Pan Yue, vice director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and a delegate to the Party congress, said he noticed that Hu has ranked the promotion of conservation culture as one of "the new and higher requirements" in building a moderately prosperous society, and that every organization and family shall be involved in the drive.

    "It fully reflects the importance of conservation culture to the Chinese nation," the senior environmental official said.

    Wang Zhigang, a delegate to the CPC congress, said: "I think the conservation culture is part of the concept of harmonious society. The development of society must be based on conservation culture."

    European countries are more and more aware of the role of China in addressing environmental issues. Pollution and climate change are global issues that cannot be solved without China, said Federico Rampini, chief correspondent of the Beijing office of the Italian newspaper The Republic.

    "It is a very good development that the environmental topic is included in the report. It shows the Chinese Communist Party has put environmental issues to a very important position on its agenda," said Rampini who has worked in China for four years.

    Lars Moerking, a reporter of German newspaper Our Time, said: "I am quite interested in the environmental topic that mentioned in the political report."

    Han Qingxiang, professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said the concept of conservation culture is an introspection of environmental deterioration in the relation between human and nature, and it advocates a harmonious relationship between human and the nature by forming a resource-efficient, environment-friendly and sustainable structure of industries.

    Han said that material and spiritual civilizations are the basis and precondition of conservation culture and in turn conservation culture will help enhance material and spiritual civilizations.

    Nowadays local governments and enterprises who used to seek economic returns only and take a blind eye to environmental conservation and energy saving are often widely criticized, while those with good conservation efforts such as the government of south China's Guangdong Province are applauded.

    Guangdong began in late 1990s to accelerate industrial restructuring and put energy-efficient services and new and high-tech sectors high on its development agenda.

    In the first half of 2006, the national per-unit energy consumption went up 0.8 percent on average, but the indicator in Guangdong, a province known for the manufacturing industry, went down 2.5 percent. In the entire year of 2006, the province's per-unit energy consumption decreased 2.93 percent in comparison with that in 2005.