State Development Zones Become China's Fastest Growing AreasChina's 43 State Economic and Technological Development Zones have generated a total of 105.2 billion yuan in gross domestic product (GDP) during the first half of this year, up 29.4 percent over the same period of last year.The Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade (MOFERT) told a seminar Tuesday that the GDP growth rate is 21.5 percentage points higher than the national average. Covering 428.51 sq.km, the 43 development zones also reported faster growth in foreign investment and foreign trade than the national average. Ma Xiuhong, assistant to Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, said the development zones were the home to 736 foreign funded enterprises whose contractual foreign investment totaled 6.18 billion U.S. dollars during the first half of this year, an increase of 34 percent, and accounting for about 18 percent of the country's total. Realized foreign investment in the development zones reached 2. 86 billion U.S. dollars, up 56 percent, the foreign trade official said. The zones also reported 17.53 billion U.S. dollars in export and import values, up 18.41 percent while the national foreign trade grew by only 8.8 percent. In 1984, China set up its first State economic and technological zone in northeast China's port city of Dalian, called the Dalian State Economic and Technological Development Zone. Of the 43 development zones, 11 were located in the middle and western part of China, which reported a total of 9.8 billion yuan in gross domestic product. Experts and representatives from the 43 development zones at the seminar said China's upcoming entry into the World Trade Organization will enable those zones to absorb more overseas investment in the manufacturing and tertiary industry, although the current preferential policies for the zones will be scrapped. |
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