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New Governor Confident About Liaoning's Future Development
Northeast China's Liaoning Province, a major industrial base in China, is expected to make big strides in economic and social development in the 10th five- year plan period (2001-2005). All problems and difficulties will be resolved through development.
These remarks were made Wednesday by Bo Xilai, governor of Liaoning, who took office only two months ago, at a press conference sponsored by the current session of the National People's Congress (NPC).
The governor revealed the general direction of Liaoning's future economic development as "reduction of personnel and debts by local state-owned enterprises, and supporting and setting up large companies".
By 2005, Liaoning will develop a petrochemical industry with an annual capacity of 60 million tons and a ship-building industry with a yearly building capacity of three million tons. Meanwhile, local steel makers will be incorporated into a new steel complex and seven to eight brandname light-industry products will emerge in the province.
As one of China's oldest industrial bases, Liaoning has a glorious past but suffered from a large number of state-owned factories that ran into trouble after the country began developing a socialist market economy.
"It is very hard to relieve local state enterprises of their difficulties, but we are very confident about overcoming the difficulties," said the governor. The province will handle well the issue of factory layoffs, so as to ensure stability for smooth reforms, and open wider to the outside world on eve of China's accession to WTO, he noted.
Bo announced that Liaoning will send a business delegation to Hong Kong and said that businessmen from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are welcome to invest in the province.
He pledged to build a hard-working, clean and efficient government.
According to previous reports, the governor was born in 1949 and a native of Dingxiang, Shanxi Province, north China. In 1982, he graduated with a master's degree in international journalism from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He was a leading official in coastal Dalian City, Liaoning, for nine years, before being promoted to the present position.
Bo Xilai, born in 1949, is a member of the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
He became vice-governor and acting governor of the province in early January this year after serving secretary of the CPC Dalian City Committee and mayor of Dalian City for years.
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