“I am confident of Guangxi’s future development and the local government has made an ambitious 10th Five-Year Plan,” Assistant Governor Yang Daoxi of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region said when interviewed by China Internet Information Center in Beijing yesterday. Yang is also head of the Guangxi Planning and Development Commission. Yang and his Guangxi delegation are participating in the Fourth Session of the Ninth National People’s Congress held recently.
Yang disclosed that the government of Guangxi planned to place special stress on five fields of development in 2001-2005.
It will strive to achieve more in the development of water resources. A number of power generation stations with large installation and generating capacities will be built, helping to reduce floods by improving the eco-system and environmental protection and upgrading the local anti-flood capacity; sea dikes along coastal areas will be further consolidated.
To link Guangxi, the southwestern thoroughfare of China, closer with the outside world, the region will accelerate transportation development and the creation of a well-developed air, land, and sea transport network will be fully formed by the end of the 10th Five-Year Plan period. It will build 1,700 km of A-grade highways and 3,000 km B-grade highways to make cities, towns, and townships more accessible. It will construct more deep-water berths, improve river canals to increase port the handling capacity from 18 million tons to 30.5 million tons each year.
Guangxi will also readjust its economic structure to develop special agriculture and industry with local characteristics. The region will increase the production of subtropical and tropical cash crops and fruit and cultivate larger areas of economic forests. It has considerable reserves of non-ferrous metals, especially the aluminum, and related industries have emerged and will be further pushed promoted.
Ecological construction will receive priority in overall economic growth, said Yang. In the previous year, Guangxi launched a campaign, called “Environmental Protection in the New Century,” which have greatly enhanced people’s environment awareness and cut many pollution sources.
To lay a solid foundation for sustainable development, Guangxi will fuel the progress of educational undertakings. It will promote the nine-year compulsory education program, provide vocational training, and popularize scientific and technological knowledge in rural areas, especially the impoverished mountainous areas. It will establish more universities and colleges of higher learning to produce more talented professionals to develop new industries.
In addition to these areas, Guangxi has set specific goals in its different stages of development, introducing large projects to invigorate the local economy, and further push the development of border trade with Vietnam, which was highly acclaimed by Premier Zhu Rongji during his visit to Guangxi early this year.
To open wider to the outside world, and lure domestic and foreign investment in local projects, Guangxi holds promotional activities at home and abroad each year, besides offering a series of favorable investment policies, according to Yang.
(CIIC by Guo Xiaohong, 03/07/2001)
