Central China Metropolis Sees Itself as Next Economic Hub

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, April 10, 2003

Central China Metropolis Sees Itself as Next Economic Hub

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Though renowned for its yearly heat wave and routine flood-combating efforts in the summer, the central metropolis of Wuhan, with a population of more than eight million, is working hard to build itself into China's next economic hub.

"We'll make Wuhan the headquarters for multinationals and tycoons," Mayor Li Xiansheng told Xinhua in a recent interview. "I'm confident of Wuhan's future."

Such confidence might come from several trump cards to be shownto the world by Wuhan, one of China's largest bases for its automobile, iron and steel and photoelectronic information industries.

Local officials of Wuhan, which is the capital of central China's Hubei Province and located along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, attribute the city's superiority over its rivals toits geographic advantage.

"Situated in the center of China, the largest market in the global economy, Wuhan enjoys an incomparable advantage of linking China's east and west, south and north," Li said.

"A circle with a radius of 1,000 kilometers can be drawn aroundWuhan to include many major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Xi'an," he added.

Li said such a regional advantage would make Wuhan a strategic key point in the central area of China, noting that it also has great potential in fields like science and technology, education, marketing and manufacturing.

A scientific and educational center in central China, Wuhan has35 institutions of higher learning covering all fields of science and technology, among which are the prestigious Wuhan University and Huazhong (Central China) Science and Technology University.

In Wuhan's East Lake High-Tech Development Zone alone, there are currently about 500,000 scientific and technical workers and more than 300,000 university students.

The Wuhan city government has drawn an ambitious blueprint to maintain an average 12 percent growth rate in its economy over thenext five years. And a Wuhan Economic Rim consisting of surrounding cities is also on the government's agenda.

According to the blueprint, Wuhan will mainly focus on developing industries like modern manufacturing, iron and steel, automobile, biological medicine and photoelectronic information and environmental protection.

Local officials hope to narrow the gap between Wuhan and other big cities by development. Wuhan reported its gross domestic product as reaching 149.3 billion yuan (about 18 billion US dollars) in 2002, but its per capita GDP of 2,300 US dollars is still less than half that of Shanghai and Guangzhou.

An increasing number of multinationals have started to invest in Wuhan, including Coca-Cola Company of the United States, the French PSA Peugeot Citroen car manufacturer and the Japanese Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

"In the era of economic globalization, the competition between cities is, to a great extent, the race to attract investment," Mayor Li said.

"We will build Wuhan into a base for China's private enterprises and lure more multinationals," he said.

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