Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, is aiming to become an important tourism city with a massive new infrastructure project, the city government has announced.
Losang Giangcun, mayor of Lhasa, said the city government had invested 1.23 billion yuan to improve water, electricity and traffic facilities as well as telecommunication, culture, education and public health in recent years.
Preferential policies and priority efforts will be given to the protection of cultural sites and historical relics in the 1,300-year-old city, he said.
The latest statistics show that in the past four years, the city government has invested a total of 13 million yuan to restore more than 40 sites of ancient buildings.
In 1989, the central government invested 53 million yuan to repair the famous Potala Palace. Meanwhile, the city initiated a series of construction and repair projects for dozens of ancient temples, palaces and residential yards.
In addition, the city government of Lhasa has issued a series of regulations on the management and protection of the cultural and historical sites.
Already renowned as an ancient cultural site, Lhasa is also an important city on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The city has a five-year plan to combine ethnic relics and modern development in the fields of tourism, construction and cultural protection.
Further efforts in the protection of ancient temples and ethnic buildings will be made during the next five years, the mayor said,adding that a museum displaying comprehensive history and culture of the ethnic Tibetans will be established during the period.
( Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2002)
