City building infrastructure for second Bo'ao Forum

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 ◆ City building infrastructure for second Bo'ao Forum

Qionghai city China's southern most Hainan province, which hosted the first annual conference of the Bo'ao Forum for Asia (BFA) in April this year, is beefing up infrastructure development, in preparation for next April's meeting.

This year, the city will invest more than one billion yuan (120million US dollars) in a number of major projects, including a convention center, comprising a multifunction conference room, a recreation center, two five-star hotels, a golf course and the office building for the secretariat. The project is expected to be completed by February 2003.

The city has also launched a tree-planting project, a street-lamp renovation project and a public wireless-phone system.

Meanwhile, other projects are underway, including an Asian-style plaza, an environment-friendly park, a souvenir market, a power station, and a tourist route.

So far this year, the city has launched 29 projects, with a contractual investment of 687.4 million yuan (82.8 million dollars).

Mayor Lu Zhiyuan said the city planned to invest 1.36 billion yuan (164 million dollars) to build two avenues, a bridge, and a 316,000 sq. m. residential project. It would expand a water works, raising its capacity to 100,000 tons a day, the mayor said.

The Bo'ao Forum has turned the city into a new tourist resort. Last year, it hosted over 90,000 visitors from both at home and abroad. In the first six months this year, the number of tourist arrivals rose by 16.4 percent over the same period of last year.

The BFA, with Bo'ao town as its permanent venue, is a non-governmental, non-profit, regular and open international forum.

The forum provides a platform for high-level dialogue among Asian nations and regions to review economic and social issues and promote economic integration of the region.