During the past few days, employees of Futong Group, which just moved from downtown Hangzhou to a suburban industrial park, said they were working in a brand-new atmosphere.

Everywhere in front of the duplicators, water faucets and switches, there were cordial and warm signs saying "please save energy and stop waste".

Seniors of the company also have given up their special cars and taken the bus to work with the employees.

More measures have been taken, said Board Chairman Wang Jianyi.

Futong will employ a new energy-circulation mode in its optical fibre production which will save at least 5 million yuan (about 600,000 US dollars), Wang said.

In fact, not only in the companies or factories, but everywhere China is taking up significant energy-saving actions, said Wang.

Early this month, the State Council, or China's cabinet, issued a notice on building a resources-efficient society, urging local governments at all levels to take strict resources-saving measures.

They were asked to efficiently coordinate the relations between economic and social development and population, resources and environment, further transform the present economic growth mode, improve the efficiency of resources utilization, and finally achieve the greatest possible economic and social returns with the least possible consumption of resources.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the strategic policy will greatly influence China's economic and social development and is even related to the future destiny of the whole nation.

Activities like saving water and electricity and opposing luxury and waste mark a return to the old ways of Chinese people, who have actually advocated hard work and thrift since ancient times.

Energy-saving is also becoming a catch-phrase in the economic field, and is being practiced by many enterprises to realize their production growth in a low cost and environmentally friendly way.

China is a populous developing country with relatively insufficient resources.

Though it has been advocating energy-saving policies for a long time, experts say that its extensive mode of economic growth marked by high energy consumption, big waste and serious pollution has not completely changed.

Statistics from the National Development and Reform Commission show that China's comprehensive energy utilization efficiency is 33 percent, 10 percent lower than that of developed countries.

Experts say that the contradictions between fast economic growth and the increase of population and insufficient fresh water, land, energy and mineral resources have been more and more conspicuous.

East China's Zhejiang Province, where the economy is growing fast but is suffering a serious energy shortage, announced it was giving policy support to its green manufacturing, clean production and information-based renovation rather than those with high energy consumption, like metallurgy and cement.

Ding Yaomin, director of Zhejiang Provincial Economic and Trade Committee, said Zhejiang hopes to take advantage of the national resources-saving wave to strictly control the number of enterprises with high energy consumption and heavy pollution.

The neighboring Anhui Province will also allocate 80 million yuan (9.67 million US dollars) every year to support enterprises to improve energy and raw material utilization efficiency and control pollution.

China's energy-saving strategies also urge some cities to abandon their traditional energy exploitation mode, said Ding.

At the same time, the enterprises have started to make full use of waste and are developing a circular economy, in a way which they did not follow before, the official said.