Yunnan Speeds Up Pace of Building Itself Into a Big Tourism Economic Province ����Basing itself on its rich tourist resources and by promoting its strong points and avoiding its shortcomings, Yunnan has concentrated its efforts on accelerating the pace of building itself into a big tourism economic province, so as to make this province with mountains accounting for 94 percent of its total area look more charming. Last year, Yunnan hosted 750,000 overseas tourists, earning it an income of US$250 million; it received 27 million domestic tourists earning it 11.5 billion yuan. The province's total income from tourism amounted to 13.5 billion yuan, 13.45 percent increase over 1997. ����Centering around the objective and requirement of building tourism into a pillar industry, Yunnan Province has formulated and implemented an overall development plan for energetically developing the tourist industry characterized by natural scenery and folklore. The plan will be carried out step by step, with priority placed in areas developing excellent tourist products. ����In a bid to strengthen and improve the tourist macro-environment, Yunnan has put in well over 30 billion yuan for large-scale infrastructure construction and has completed four key projects-fine-quality highway network, aviation network, program-controlled telephone network and main city power grid. ���� Indepth 1999-01-11 Page1