BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- A speech delivered by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, at a national conference on ecological and environmental protection on July 17, 2023, will be published on Friday.

The speech by Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, will be published in this year's 15th issue of the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee.

The speech stresses that China's economic and social development has entered a high-quality stage characterized by accelerated green and low-carbon transformation, while ecological conservation remains in a critical period marked by mounting pressure and challenging tasks.

In advancing ecological conservation, efforts should be made to properly handle the relationship between high-quality development and high-standard protection, between tackling major challenges and coordinating governance, between natural recovery and human-assisted restoration, between external constraints and internal driving forces, as well as between carbon peak and neutrality commitments and self-determined actions, it says.

The speech emphasizes that building a Beautiful China is essential to promoting modernization that features harmony between humanity and nature.

To this end, it calls for sustained efforts to deepen the fight against pollution, accelerate the green and low-carbon transformation of development models, and enhance the diversity, stability and sustainability of the ecosystem.

It also underlines the need to work toward peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality in an active and prudent manner, safeguard ecological security, and improve the support system for the building of a Beautiful China.