Anhui Province straddling the Yangtze River in central China held numerous meetings in the first half to make decisions on building up small townships and revitalizing small enterprises

This move was aimed at stepping up economic and social development in the province.

The province has focused on some 200 townships out of the province's 800 for this purpose. These townships will carry out market-oriented management, engage in intensive construction and woo pluralistic investment and will have a foreign-oriented economy. And by 2005, 35% of the province's townships will come up to this criteria.

Zhou Jilian, chief of the Provincial Restructure Committee, noted that the small townships will serve as the external form for the development of the small enterprises, while the small enterprises are the propping force to the small townships, the two cannot be separated. The provincial government has called on all localities to lead small enterprises to small townships and accelerate the reform of the state enterprises in tandem with the development of the small townships. To change managerial mechanism in bigger enterprises while setting free smaller ones is the principle of reforming state enterprises. In this way, small enterprises will be able to be revitalized through fostering, affiliation with other enterprises, merger, contracting, joint venture, insolvency and others.

This measure taken by the Anhui government has yielded good results. At Maoji Township in Fengtai County, from January through September this year, the township enterprises gained over 340 million yuan in output value, 33.42 million yuan in taxes and profits and 16.899 million yuan in financial revenue. registering a year-on-year hike of 15%, 18% and 15% respectively.