Much headway has been made in using foreign funds on key projects for West China development, says Zhang Guobao, vice minister of the State Development and Planning Commission, at a press conference in Shanghai on Tuesday, October 16, 2001 when briefing on the policy and projects for West China development.

After China made known its west development strategy many APEC members have shown strong interests and rushed to the western regions for inspection. By now, some members' enterprises have joined in this of West China's construction heat and there are some projects already under negotiation. For example, POSCO from ROK has won the bid of 60,000 tons steel in the first-phase moving-west-gas-east project when negotiations on relevant projects to be launched are still being carried out by Chinese and Malaysian companies. Russia has also shown strong intention for cooperation. ABB and Siemens have won bids for the west-east electricity transmission project and have even signed a contractual worth of US$1 billion respectively on October 12.

In the sector of opening up trade and services as of banking, insurance and travel, a great ease has been effected on investment environment to allow foreign investors to set up more enterprises for West China development.

Zhang also briefed the progress made in four key development projects of West China. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway has been under construction. By the end of September, an input amount of 686 million yuan (US$82,981,528) would be registered to add up to a total of 1 billion yuan (US$120,964,327) of investment to be made by yearend. Seven projects for west-east electricity transmission already started last November in Guizhou and Yunnan. This year will also see a batch of large projects to be launched. Of these, projects like electricity transmission networks linking up Three Gorges, Guangdong, Guizhou and Guangdong will be built at a cost of 7 billion yuan (US$846,750,293) to boast an aggregate of 10 million kw capacity to Guangdong by 2005. Early-stage preparations for west-east natural gas transmission have been completed and negotiations with foreign investors have been underway, and according to plan, the project is to be launched the coming year. Meanwhile, a huge south-north water diversion project has been under feasibility study.

(People's Daily October 18, 2001)