Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality launched its first regular press conference Thursday as part of the country's efforts to improve "transparency " of government work at provincial levels.

Wen Tianping, a Chongqing government spokesman, met reporters from 46 news agencies, both domestic and foreign, in the afternoon and answered questions about the development of the country's largest municipality with a population of nearly 28 million.

He told the media about an ambitious development plan of the "one-hour economic circle", which refers to the core downtown and 23 nearby districts and counties within a hour's drive.

"The gross domestic product of the one-hour circle will reach or near 1.7 trillion yuan (US$229.7 billion) by 2020, eight times the economic volume of 238.7 billion yuan in 2005."

Three to four million people in rural areas will be attracted to work in the economic circle by 2020 with more job opportunities to be created, according to Wen.

Chongqing is the second city after Shanghai on the Chinese mainland to launch regular news briefings. Shanghai started regular conferences in early 2003.

The Chongqing press conferences will be held monthly on the second Thursday.

Scholars said the regular briefings reflected the increasing openness of government and would promote better communication between government, media and citizens.
 
(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2007)