Xiamen Economic Zone Celebrates 20th Birthday

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 24, 2001

Xiamen Economic Zone Celebrates 20th Birthday

Festivities to celebrate the 20th birthday of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone took place on Saturday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Twenty years of development have transformed Xiamen from a small coastal town to an important trade and tourist city.

Xiamen Witnesses Great Changes

Xiamen Special Economic Zone embraces its 20th anniversary

Festivities to celebrate the 20th birthday of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone in East China's Fujian Province took place on Saturday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

At least 1,000 people participated in the celebration gala. Vice-Premier Li Lanqing attended the performance that celebrated the anniversary.

The fast development of Xiamen's Special Economic Zone has been a good example of the achievements that the policy has brought to Fujian, said Song Defu, Fujian provincial secretary of the Party Committee, at the celebration ceremony.

"We will carry on with the reforms, draw lessons from past experiences and strive for a better future," he said.

Xiamen has ranked 10th among all cities on comprehensive development

Twenty years of development have transformed Xiamen from a small coastal town to an important trade and tourist city.

In 2000, it was ranked 10th among all the cities in China on comprehensive development, with an annual economic growth rate of 20 per cent and an annual income per capita of US$4,500.

Foreign trade has been an important field, on which the city relies.

In 2000, the total amount of foreign trade exceeded US$10 billion, and export and import trade between Xiamen and Taiwan Province reached US$1.191 billion.

Xiamen Special Economic Zone Aims High

Xiamen, one of China's four earliest special economic zones, hopes to attain the level of moderately developed countries in terms of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) by 2005.

The local economy of Xiamen has been growing at an annual average rate of 18.78 percent in the past two decades. By 1999, Xiamen's economic turnover reached 45.83 billion yuan, 25.33 times the comparable statistics in 1980, while total industrial output value was 69.88 billion yuan, 61.4 times the 1980 figure.

By June this year, Xiamen approved 4,375 overseas-financed projects, with contracts involving 16.97 billion U.S. dollars of overseas investment. And a total of 10.96 billion U.S. dollars of overseas capital have been put into use in the coastal city.

China now has five SEZs: Shenzhen, Xiamen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Hainan.

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