GDP growth rate: 8.3 percent.

Revenue: 22.91 billion yuan (US$2.77 billion) in 2001, up 17.8 percent over the previous year.

Foreign Trade: The total volume of imports and exports increased 10 percent in 2001.

Foreign investment:

By 1996, more than 40 countries and regions had invested in Shanxi. Overseas investors include many world-renowned conglomerates, such as US-based CBM energy group, Chia Tai Group of Thailand and Britain’s BOC. Since the first foreign-funded enterprise was established in 1984, Shanxi had approved 1,947 foreign-funded enterprises by the end of 1998, with contractual foreign investment reaching US$3.159 billion and actually used foreign capital standing at US$1.08 billion.

Agriculture:

Cultivated land covers 3.66 million hectares, accounting for 23 percent of the province’s total area. The province’s agricultural economy relies mainly on farm production supplemented by the breeding industry. Farm crops include corn, millet, rice, wheat, sorghum, potato, tuber crops, buckwheat, broomcorn millet, and bean crops. The province also produces such cash crops as cotton, tobacco, sugar beet, oil crops and hemp. It abounds in fruits such as apple, pear, grapes, walnuts and red dates, as well as precious medicinal herbs like Codonopsis pilosola and Astragalus membranaceus. The breeding industry primarily raises livestock and poultry (pig, horse, ox, sheep, chicken, rabbit, donkey, mule), plus sericulture and apiculture. In recent years, the province has developed freshwater fish farming, with products basically satisfying market demand.

Pillar industries:

Coal, metallurgy, machine building, power, chemistry, light industry and textiles form the pillar industries of Shanxi.

Poverty alleviation plan:

The poverty relief program for 2002 was aimed at enabling 1.82 million poverty-stricken people to have adequate food and clothing, and helping those who had just solved the problem of food and clothing increase their income and raise their living standards.