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Heilongjiang Takes Tourism as Pillar Industry in New CenturyBased on a thorough investigation, main leaders of Heilongjiang Province have come to the conclusion: To achieve sustainable development, the overly heavy economic structure must be changed and tourism made to become a pillar industry in the new century. This report, carried in the front-page new Column, "Marching Toward the New Century", runs as follows:The period from New Year's Day to the Spring Festival, Heilongjiang encountered a spell of cold weather rare in recent years. However, it is unexpected that ice-and-snow tourism was exceptionally "hot". During the Spring Festival, the province received more than 1 million Chinese and foreign tourists (on turnstile count), up 20 percent over last year's same period, surpassing Hainan Province for the first time. Visitors who swarmed in had "stirred up" a hot air wave in Harbin. Ice-and-snow is a "visiting card" of Heilongjiang. "The ice-and-snow world" is a unique gift the Heilongjiang people presented to the new millennium. On the thousand-li icebound Songhuajiang River, they used 190,000 cubic meters of ice and snow to build up over 500 imposing structures, of which the 36.9-meter " Century Bell Tower" created the world's highest ice building. The slide made with 13,000 cubic meters of ice is a structure built with the largest amount of ice in the world. In just a little over one month, the "Ice-and-Snow World" garden had welcomed in well over 400,000 Chinese and foreign visitors, during the Spring Festival, the garden received an average of over 20,000 people a day. The China Heilongjiang International Ski Festival, which had hosted two of such events", offered brand-new product series of ski tourism, the more than 20 skiing rinks including Yabuli, Erlongshan and Yuquanshan were bustling with activity of this specific event. Chinese and foreign visitors deeply felt the special charming of the Heilongjiang ice-and-snow culture, the black-soil culture and the north ethnic customs and culture. Heilongjiang, as a large province of grain, forest and energy, has been lacking in strength to boost its economy in recent years due to the reduction in resources and the sharpening structural contradiction. Main leaders of the Heilongjiang provincial Party committee and provincial government, after conducting thorough investigation and study, have come to realize that to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to change the overly heavy economic structure and make the tourist industry become a pillar industry in the new century. Due to its late development, Heilongjiang abounds in ecological and tourist resources. The province is indeed richly bestowed with these resources, the ice-and-snow period lasts as long as five months there and the coverage rate of forest ranks first in the country, so it suffers less pollution. In a bid to convert the ecological and tourist resources advantages into economic advantages, the Heilongjiang provincial Party committee, the provincial people's congress and the provincial government have, centered around the rapid and sound development of the tourist industry, adopted a series of policies and regulations and optimized the environment for the development of the tourist industry. At the same time, they have energetically strengthened tourist infrastructure construction centered on the construction of roads and communications facilities, newly added road surface exceeds 1,000 km per year, the Harbin, Qiqihar and Jiamus airports have been expanded, a special fund has been allocated to be used in promotion of tourism and the renovation of public toilets in scenic areas. Various localities have presented excellent tourist itineraries, such as ice and snow series, forest series, wetland and grassland series, volcano topography series, drifting and angling series and wildlife appreciation series. The Harbin Ice-Snow Business Talk this year has drawn the participation of over 1,300 enterprises from a dozen provinces and cities, with the contracted volume of trade reaching 1.4 billion yuan, up by more than 20 percent over last year. The boom season of ice-and-snow tourism this year began one moth ahead of time. Previously, in the Spring Festival, luxury guesthouses and hotels had no resident, but this year the occupancy rate exceeded 110 percent, unless one makes reservation for a hotel room, it would be difficult for one to have an accommodation. The government actively guides the development of ecological tourist industry, folk investment has also poured in. A dozen or so ski rinks have been added in the past two years, over 90 percent of them were built with folk investment.
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