The United States remains very open to and supportive of exchanges with China on the management of national parks, U.S. Interior Minister Sally Jewell said Friday.
The U.S. is also willing to share with China its sometimes " painful" and "embarrassing" lessons in the history of building a national park system, Jewell told reporters at Foreign Press Center in Washington.
During the seventh U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue that concluded in Washington on Wednesday, the two countries reaffirmed their mutual commitment to cooperation in parks management.
Jewell said Americans "are very proud of our national parks and what they represent" and "our use of national parks to tell an American story has been very powerful."
The laws that created the national park system in the U.S. center on "preserving America's special places unimpaired for the benefit of future generations," said the Secretary, adding that, however, the U.S. has "learned painful lessons on that journey."
Earlier this month, China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the U.S. Paulson Institute inked an agreement to cooperate on a national park system for China over the next three years.
The program will research into how the management of national conservation areas, geological parks and the wood parks can be improved, and successful measures will be rolled out across the country, according to the NDRC.
China only has a handful of national parks in places such as Heilongjiang and Zhejiang provinces. Although some scenic areas use the English term national park, they are just conservation areas.
China has thousands of conservation areas, which cover about 18 percent of the country.
The Paulson Institute was founded in 2011 by former U.S. treasury secretary Henry Paulson to promote economic growth and environmental preservation in China and the United States.
