Ties with Taiwan boon to Fujian

BEIJING - Peaceful and stable cross-Straits ties will enable Fujian province to speed up its development, a senior official from the province said.

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The province, which sits opposite to Taiwan across the Straits, sees the current thawing of cross-Straits relations as a great opportunity for improving its once-backward industrial sector, Zhou Lianqing, deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) and director of the economic and trade commission in Fujian said during the current NPC session that will conclude on Monday.

The draft 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), which is the country's development blueprint for the next five years and was submitted for discussion at the NPC session, contains the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement that was signed with Taiwan in 2010.

The plan also calls for encouraging Taiwan investment in the Haixi Economic Zone, covering Fujian and 14 neighboring cities in the eastern coastal provinces.

Under the new policies, Fujian has emphasized the fast development of expressways, railways, ports and other components of a modern transport system, as well as energy exploration.

In the coming five years, Fujian will work to hasten its own development, Zhou said.

By the end of 2015, the coastal ports throughout the province will together be capable of handling 500 million tons of cargo and the length of roads and expressways will exceed 5,000 kilometers, according to the provincial development and reform commission.

Energy will be derived from a variety of sources, including nuclear materials, geothermal, wind, the tides, the sun and biomass materials. Clean energy will make up about half of all energy used by 2015, the commission said.

By 2010, the figure for industrial added value in Fujian had reached more than 624 billion yuan ($91.8 billion), accounting for about 43.5 percent of the province's GDP. That total increased by about 18.4 percent from the previous year, according to the latest statistics from the commission.

During the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), the value of industrial investment in Fujian reached at least 875 billion yuan, which was nearly four times greater than during the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-2005) period.

The investment in fixed assets in the province reached 270 million yuan in the past five years, surpassing the total amount of money spent for similar purposes from 1949 to 2005.

The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement and the attraction of Taiwan investment will be beneficial to both cross-Straits cooperation and development, Deng Benyuan, NPC deputy and head of the Taiwan affairs office in Fujian said during the session.

Deng said Fujian not only represents the province itself in encouraging cross-Straits ties but also is responsible for strengthening the cross-Straits communications in the long term, he said.

"All these preferential policies between Fujian and Taiwan have promoted harmonious development across the Straits," he added.

China Daily

(China Daily 03/14/2011 page7)