IN BRIEF (Page 10)

Sanya to boost tourism

The Sanya city government announced that in 2008 it will strengthen its internationalization process, focusing on attracting investment and further developing its tourism industry.

Sanya, a large beach resort tourist town and the southernmost city on Hainan island, will take advantage of several key areas such as its Haitangwan town to attract more foreign investors.

Sanya will encourage foreign enterprises to set up wholly foreign-owned or shareholding travel agencies around the city.

In addition, Sanya will speed up the renovation of some scenic spots including "Ends Of The Earth" and Luhuitou peninsula, 5 kilometers south of Sanya.

It will gradually build an international tourism service management model including road signs, tourism signs, tourism counseling, and emergency aid systems.

Liaoning cleans up act

Liaoning province in northeast China will close over 200 small paper-making plants along the Liaohe River basin this year and try to remove the chemical stench from 10 branches of the Liaohe River over the next three years.

Wang Bingjie, director of the Liaoning provincial environment department, said that by closing down the paper plants, they would eliminate about 400,000 tons of outdated production capacities and eliminate a batch of major polluters.

In addition to shutting down the paper plants, enterprises of seven industries, including metallurgy, chemical, medicine, petroleum, nonmetal mining and textile will be listed for closure.

Windfarm

Guangdong province plans to build the nation's largest offshore wind farm, in a bid to quench its power thirst.

The facility, with a sea area coverage of 240 sq km, will be co-sponsored by the Lufeng municipal government and Guangdong Baolihua New Energy Stock Co Ltd.

The plan includes a 1.25 million kw wind farm, an 8 million kw power plant and a dock construction project.

Toy crack-down

In a provincial-level campaign that began last year, Jiangsu has suspended the operations of 85 toy manufacturers due to poor management or production conditions, and incomplete product tracking systems.

Jiangsu is a major toy exporter. Before the campaign, there were 396 certified toy operators and over 2,800 toy processing companies in the province with a total of about 200,000 employees.

Water projects

The government plans to invest 9.08 billion yuan on 271 water pollution control projects in Southwest China's Chongqing by 2010 to prevent pollution of the Three Gorges Reservoir area.

The investment will go to urban sewage treatment, urban garbage disposal and industrial pollution control projects.

(China Daily 03/17/2008 page10)