Wu Huijuan, vice-director of the ministry's Industrial Development Department, elaborated on the plans and focus of the department's work in this area during the opening of the sixth National Earthquake Engineering Conference in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, on Friday.

The relevant laws and regulations on general earthquake precautions were about to be improved, along with technical standards, said Wu.

Meanwhile, rules and regulations are to be established and improved to ascertain where the responsibility lies.

Wu also emphasized that quality control and improved construction techniques to reduce the damage caused by earthquakes was fundamental.

"One of the focuses of our work is to supervise and improve the earthquake resistance ability of both the old buildings and the newly built ones," Wu said.

The conference was jointly sponsored by a branch of the Architectural Society of China, which specifically deals with natural disaster precautionary measures, the Committee of Earthquake Engineering of the Seismological Society of China and the Nanjing-based Southeast University.

About 200 science and construction experts and enterprise representatives attended the conference.

(China Daily November 11, 2002)