Full Text: China's economic, social development plan (3)

Full Text: China's economic, social development plan (3)

Energy, transportation and other basic industries andinfrastructure enjoyed significant growth. Coal output in 2007reached 2.54 billion tons, 6.9% more than in 2006. Total power-generating capacity was increased by more than 100 millionkilowatts, and the total amount of electricity generated was up14.4%. Output of refined petroleum rose by 7.5%, 3.1 percentagepoints higher than the increase of the previous year. There wascontinued improvement in the transportation infrastructure. A totalof 143,595 kilometers of highways was added, including 8,059kilometers of expressways, and construction of the five vertical andseven horizontal national trunk highways totaling 35,000 kilometerswas basically completed. Newly built railway lines opened to traffictotaled 678 kilometers, double-track railways 480 kilometers andelectrified railways 938 kilometers. Annual cargo handling capacityof berths for 10,000 ton-class or larger ships increased by 439.16million tons. In addition, five more civilian airports were builtand expansion of Beijing Capital International Airport wascompleted. These improvements in the transportation infrastructurehelped ensure adequate capacity for the transport of key materials.

The service industry enjoyed faster development. The guidelinesfor accelerating development of the service sector were carried outto give play to the guiding role of government grants in promotingoverall growth of the service industry. Total added value of theservice sector for the year reached 9.6328 trillion yuan. Theindustrial structure is now dominated by the service sector in anumber of large and medium-sized cities in China, with total addedvalue of the service sector accounting for 50% or more of local GDPin some cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Furthermore,there has been improvement in the structure of the service industryitself, with accelerated growth of modern services. The number ofInternet users in China now exceeds 200 million, making the countrysecond in the world. Online shopping for goods and servicesaccounted for 13% of total retail sales in the country. Figure 5.Added Value of the Service Sector

Development among different regions continued to be morebalanced. A total of 55.6 billion yuan from the central governmentallocations for development projects for the year was spent in thewestern region, 4.1 billion yuan more than the previous year. Policy-related support for border areas and ethnic minority areas in theregion also increased last year. Construction was started on ten keyprojects in the region, bases were set up to help develop industriesto take advantage of local characteristics and strengths, a numberof well known, high quality brand names were established and humanresource development in the region made significant progress. Innortheast China, fresh progress was made in developing the equipmentmanufacturing, raw material processing and non-staple agriculturalproduct processing industries. The pace of reorganization andrestructuring of enterprises in key industries was accelerated.Initial success was attained in transforming the economies of citiesformerly reliant on natural resources. Efforts to control sinkholesin coalmining areas were accelerated. A total of 27.2 million squaremeters of shantytowns were turned into proper residential areas innortheast China. The guidelines for boosting development of thecentral region were implemented. The guidelines specified whichareas of the six provinces in the central region would best fit thenortheast China revitalization model and which ones would best fitthe development model of the western region. Further progress wasmade in developing grain production bases in the central region,steady progress was made in strengthening bases for energy and rawmaterial production and centers for modern equipment manufacturing,and significant progress was made in developing integratedtransportation hubs for the central region. In the eastern region,the pace of improvement in the pattern of economic development wasaccelerated, development of high-tech industries and modern serviceswas accelerated, and the capacity for independent innovation wasenhanced in the equipment manufacturing, information technology andbiotechnology industries. Clusters of cities in the Yangtze Deltaand the Pearl River Delta and in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area madesteady improvement in their ability to pool resources and lead thenation in development. (More)