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News Digest: West on the Move
China has adopted a strategy of developing its vast western part, making it a key task in the national economy this year and in coming years. Following are major events on the western development this week:
Beijing Helps Western Areas Train Students Colleges
Beijing will recruit more students from the western areas in the next five years, said municipal education committee's director Xu Xi'an.
The Ministry of Education adopted a series of measures earlier this year to fuel educational development in the relatively backward western areas. A key task is to mobilize more developed provinces and cities to help poor areas advance their education development.
China to Spend 100 Billion Yuan on Environment in Western Region
The Chinese government will spend 110 billion yuan (13 billion U.S. dollars) to improve the environment in the western part of the country in the next five years, according to Minister of Finance Xiang Huaicheng.
He said that the government has allocated 12 billion yuan for environmental projects in western China this year, five billion yuan more than the annual average in the past few years.
China Expects to Have Over 1,000 Cities By 2015 China expects to see fast urbanization in the next 15 years, with the number of cities forecast to rise to more than 1,000 by 2015.
According to a senior official with the Ministry of Construction, China will have an urban development rate of around 50 percent and a total urban population of 600 million by 2015.
China has so far developed 668 cities. Most of these cities are concentrated in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, as well as on the eastern Liaoning Peninsula and in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area. Some 200 medium-sized cities have been developed on the basis of fast-growing towns.
4th China Intl. Silk Conference Concludes in Ningxia
The Fourth China International Silk Conference concluded in Yinchuan, the capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, this week.
The conference was attended by over 250 experts and business people from the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Bangladesh and China.
The shift of this year's conference site to Yinchuan is to help promote the economic development of western China. Ningxia enjoys ample sunshine and warm climate favorable to the growth of mulberry trees. Its raw silk is exported to Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Small Hydro-Electric Power Projects Benefit Rural China Small hydro-electric power stations have provided about 300 million farmers in western China's rural area with electricity. About half of China's rural areas and 25 percent of rural residents now have electricity. They no longer depend on traditional rosin resources for fuel thanks to the country's effort in building small hydro-electric power stations, By the end of last year, China built 43,000 small hydro- electric power stations in rural areas, providing an annual total of 72 billion kwh, said Tian Shen, deputy director of the MWR Hydro-Electric Power Bureau.
Top Think Tank to Help Westward Development
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the state's top think tank, plans to organize two groups of experts to visit Sichuan and Guizhou provinces and Chongqing Municipality to undertake an on-the-spot investigations.
After the two-week study tour which begins this week, the experts, all members of the academic committee of the CASS, are expected to propose plans to boost economic development of these southwestern parts of China.
The experts will carry out surveys of economic and social conditions in these areas, and some will hold seminars on a number of hot issues in China.
Police Chief Vows to Guard Strategy of Developing West China
Minister of Public Security Jia Chunwang has pledged that public security departments are ready to protect and serve the strategy of developing the backward western region of China. The minister made the pledge in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, at a forum attended by provincial police heads from the western region on Wednesday.
President Jiang Zemin's important instructions on the role of the Party also mean that the country's public security force and police should play their due role in developing the west, the minister said.
Netherlands-Funded Agricultural Projects in Ningxia
Two agricultural projects built with loans worth 7.55 million US dollars from the Netherlands were recently launched in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
One project will build a drainage system which will use 5 million US dollars in loans. The project will drain off water from 23,333 ha of land in the Yellow River flooded zone during the flood season and involve importation of water drainage equipment and technology from the Netherlands.
The other project will build two dairy farms with 2.52 million US dollars in loans. The farms, equipped with high-temperature sterilizing production lines, are expected to turn out 11,000 tons of fresh milk annually.
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