Shenzhen Ready for China's Nasdaq: MayorShenzhen, China's most developed special economic zone designed by late leader Deng Xiaoping, is ready for staging China's ``second board'' stock market, or China's Nasdaq.``We have made every effort to gain the secondary board market to be set up in the city,'' said Yu Youjun, the mayor of Shenzhen, told reporters lately in Beijing. Yu said that Shenzhen's high-tech industry, whose output topped 81.98 billion yuan (US$9.91 billion) in 1999 accounting for 40.5 per cent of the total output of the city's industrial production, has played an important role in the city's economic development. ``High-Tech is already the No 1 driving force behind Shenzhen's annual double digit GDP growth, '' said Yu. Shenzhen, earmarked as one of the first Chinese cities in early 1980s to pioneer market economy, now has the most flourishing private business in China. The planned second board, if erected in Shenzhen, will inevitably propel rapid growth of the city's private, new and high-tech enterprises, Yu said. The local government has been seeking to establish a rational investment system to attract domestic and overseas venture capital into its high-tech firms, Yu said. Last year, Shenzhen set up two high-tech venture capital investment companies home and aboard, aiming at introducing more international venture capital. Till now, a good number of foreign investors have showed increasing interests in cooperating with Shenzhen's high-tech enterprises, Yu said. The mayor also disclosed that all the booths for the upcoming 2nd China International High-tech Fair, which will be held in Shenzhen late this year, have been snatched. It shows the city has rising lure for high-tech research achievements as well as venture capitalists, Yu said. By 2005, Shenzhen's gross domestic product (GDP) volume will reach 280 billion yuan (US$33.7 billion), Yu said. |
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