Western China has placed infrastructure construction at the
top of their development agenda, top provincial officials said
at the Fourth Session of the Ninth National People's Congress
(NPC).
Wang Lequan, an
NPC deputy, said the area will focus on the construction of
transport, power grids and reservoirs in the next five years.
"Infrastructure
construction is expected to greatly fuel the development of
the local economy as a lot of steel, raw materials and machinery
are needed for it," said Wang, also Party secretary of
the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Huge projects include
a west-to-east gas transmission project and a railway connecting
the region with Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan, Wang said.
With the construction
and upgrading of current railways, roads and airports, the
region, a major agricultural and stock-breeding producer,
hopes to become an international trade centre.
"We are confident
we can double our foreign trade volume from the current US$2.3
billion in the coming five years," Wang said.
Like Xinjiang,
Qinghai Province also pins its hopes on infrastructure construction
to increase the income of its residents.
Zhao Leji, governor
of the province, said the construction of the planned 1,100-kilometre-long
Qinghai-Tibet railway will considerably boost the domestic
demand because half the railway will be built in Qinghai Province.
Once completed,
the more than US$2.6 billion project will facilitate business
and communications between the remote province and eastern
China, Zhao added.
(China Daily 03/08/2001)
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