Green lawn, white pigeons, colored road, flower bed, trees and sculptures, not mention beautiful buildings, that is what you can see when you walking on the Century Avenue which is 100 meter wide and 4 kilometer long in the Dagang District, Tianjin. You can feel beauty, peace and tranquility. Dagang District is the first Environmental Model District in China.

Dagang district is located in the southeast of Tianjin municipality and 30 kilometers west to the Bohai Sea. The District area is 1,114.8 square kilometer and the population is 320,000.

There are rich nature resources, such as land, petroleum and natural gas in the District. Especially petro-chemical industry is the most predominant in the economic development and it is one of the petro-chemical industry in China. From 1960s petroleum and natural gas have been exploited and from 1970s petro-chemical industry has been put into operation. The awareness of environmental protection has been generally recognized in the District. In order to achieve the economic development and prosperity we never can bear the environmental and ecological deterioration. In 1997 a scientific environmental protection plan has been created and the project of to make the District with water clean, blue sky and no noise has been implemented.

Many progresses have been achieved since carrying out the opening and reform policy in the District. The economy increased 20 percent annually and the District GNP was 7.97 billion RMB in 1998 and 8.5 billion RMB in 1999. The living space per capitol reached 18.63 square meter and the natural gas has been used for all house heating and household fuel. The average green area per capitol is 13.5 square meters which is almost 4 times as the national average. More than 3.0 billion RMB has been invested in the environmental protection projects in recent years. The Guxiehu Wetland Reserve has been set and many birds, such as white swan and white crane have been shown in the Reserve.

The sustainable development is main strategy in the District. A sewage plant with the capacity of 100,000 ton per day has been put into operation. The water recycling and/reusing has been carried out in the District. The District administration includes the environmental quality targets, the environmental management targets and the environmental protection targets in the economic and social development plan each year.

The District area has been divided as 5 functional zones in 1997. They are the natural reserve zone, the ecological agriculture zone, the township industry zone, the coastal ecological restoring zone and the urban integrated development zone.