Chinanews, November 2 – China released its National Plan on Precautions Against Earthquakes (2006-2020) on October 31, saying that 50% of its territory is located in regions of high earthquake intensity of VII or above, including 23 regional or provincial capitals and two thirds of metropolises with at least a population of one million each.According to the plan, by 2020 most parts of China will have the capacity of surviving earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 on the Richter Scale.Though China only takes up only 7% of the acreage of all the land in the world, 35% of the world’s fatal earthquakes in the 20th century took place here. These earthquakes killed 1.2 million people in all, 590 thousand of them in China.Earthquakes will remain one of China’s top concerns in the foreseeable future, and rural areas will be equipped with the same earthquake-proof facilities as the cities, particularly the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the upper reaches of the Yellow River and southwest China, where there are large hydropower projects.