Central China Province Absorbs Foreign InvestmentOutside investment and technology have become a strong booster for the economy in central China's Hunan Province.As one of China's major agriculture provinces, Hunan attracted 608 foreign-funded projects during China's Ninth Five-Year Plan Period (1995-2000), and invited 347 foreign experts from more than 20 countries, including the United States, England, France, Canada, Japan and Australia, who are engaged in the economic and technological sectors, for exchanges. A Japanese expert on rice-growing on dry land came to Hunan in 1991 to promote his technology. The introduced technology has since been applied on some 6.1 million hectares of rice fields in Hunan, which has increased the local grain yield by over 3.3 billion kilograms. Meanwhile, donations valued at 316 million yuan (US$37 million) from overseas Chinese reached the province between 1987 and 2000. "The exchanges have helped accelerate the efficiency and open- up of the government's administrative work," said Wu Xiangdong, deputy secretary of the provincial committee of Communist Party of China. |
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