New opening-up efforts have paid off in the coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong Province, as local economic development can be attributed mainly to foreign economic trade and cooperation, said Qingdao Mayor Wang Jiarui.

By the end of 1999, the city had approved 8,964 overseas-fundedenterprises, using US$12.48 billion of contractual overseas investment.

Of this total, 3,142 overseas-funded enterprises have become operational and have a total of 350,000 employees, accounting for 35 percent of all local employment.

Overseas-funded businesses paid 15.8 percent of local taxation and reaped as much as 43 percent of all local industrial sales.

These companies also handled 74 percent of all local exports, which totaled 4.46 billion US dollars last year, a rise of 8.9 percent compared to 1998, and accounted for 37.3 percent of the local GDP in 1999.

Qingdao has now spent 28 billion yuan to construct local economic and technological development zones, bonded zones, and hi-tech industrial parks, and 42 percent of the overseas money introduced into Qingdao has been flowing into the economic zones and parks, which jointly contribute 16 percent of the local GDP.

Local township enterprises have so far used 1.92 billion US dollars of actual overseas investment, 28.4 percent of the total.

There are now seven overseas financial organizations in Qingdao,which is also home to 300 hi-tech enterprises.

Qingdao is seeking new economic spurs by opening wider to the outside world, and intends to increase the use of overseas money in agriculture and the service sector, and attract more investmentfrom multinationals.