More Investment in Western China This YearThe vast underdeveloped central and western regions of China are expected to receive more capital investment than ever this year from the central government to boost their capacity for sustainable development, according to the State Development Planning Commission.Capital spending is expected to focus on infrastructure construction, ecological environment improvement and science and technology, according to sources with the Commission. Investment is expected to increase substantially over last year, when a total of 43 billion yuan (5.24 billion U.S. dollars) raised from a treasury bond issue was earmarked for the regions. "We are expecting a breakthrough in improving the infrastructure and ecological environment in the western part of China in the coming five to 10 years," a ranking official of the Commission said. "Efforts will be made to ensure that projects launched last year go on smoothly and that preparations be made to launch more projects," he said. Among projects to be started soon is a railway running from Qinghai to Tibet. It will become the only rail link between the autonomous region and the rest of the country. The 1,118-kilometer railway will extend from Golmud in Qinghai to Lhasa, the regional capital of Tibet. Others include a 14.5 billion U.S. dollar pipeline to move 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from the Tarim Basin in the central Asian region of Xinjiang to Shanghai on the coast by 2005 and projects to transmit power from west China to east China. An additional 333,000 ha of cultivated farmland will be reconverted to pastureland this year. Also high on agenda are a number of hydroelectric projects in Baise Prefecture of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, south China,and in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, sections of trunk national highways in western China, a pipeline to move oil from Lanzhou to Chongqing in southwest China, and projects to improve infrastructure in major central cities. China began implementing a strategy to develop its western regions in a big way last year to narrow a widening gap between its east and west. |
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