Taiyuan Railway Administration has been making a great effort to get itself out of loss-suffering and began making profit in 1999.

Passenger traffic totaled 11.423 million persons/time in 1999, 101.1% of the annual goal; the freight volume stood at 52.54 million tons, 102% of the annual goal; and the annual revenue totaled 2,292.102 million yuan, 104.8% of the yearly goal. While discharging its traffic task, the administration had initiated 8 economic entities to widen its management predicated on farming and breeding guided by new and high technology. Last year's income from multi-management came to 663 million yuan, 6% more than the annual target with profit and tax totaling 50 million yuan and topping the annual goal by 10.5%.

The Materials Group Corporation in Huhhot, capital of Inner Mongolia, had cut losses by about 20 million yuan annually over the past two years. This was achieved by reforms, changes in mechanism, and asset regrouping.

In 1999, the Capital Iron and Steel Works, one of the biggest iron and steel enterprises in China, reaped 980 million yuan in profit, more than 40 million yuan over a year earlier. 1999 is the first year that the Chinese government had put control on steel output. The Capital Iron and Steel Works reduced 0.81 million tons from its annual steel output. At the same time it had phased out outdated technology and optimized industrial structure to have beefed up hi-tech content and added value of its rolled steel. As a result, new and high technological products sales totaled 1.867 billion yuan and the steel price went up by about 300 yuan per ton.

In response to the central government's call for 'controlling the aggregate output and restructuring", the Wuhan Iron and Steel Works raked 330 million yuan in profit, an increase of 10% over a year ago, on the basis of a 17.97% cut on its annual output in 1999. Its self-managed steel products exports amounted to 0.6186 million tons for forex totaling U.S.$ 123 million. These gains were made through beefed-up R&D, optimized products mix, namebrand strategy and others.

Last year, the steel enterprise opened up 58 new products of which 36 were badly needed in the market and the output of these new products accounted for over 2/3 of the total in the enterprise.

It had sought ways and means to upgrade steel products. 37 major economic and technological indices had reached record highs last year and 585 million yuan were cut from production costs. The optimized product mix and product upgrading had made it possible for per ton steel price to go up 100 yuan over a year earlier with a production-marketing rate of 100% in 1999.

Photo: Xing Long Zhuang Colliery under the Yanzhou Mining Group in Shandong Province The colliery churned out over 6 million raw coal in 1999, gaining laurels for economic efficiency for 6 years running in China. The annual output is one million tons more than in the previous year with profit and tax totaling 213 million yuan.