IN BRIEF (Page 9)

Shanghai sourcing center

Shanghai plans to invest 2 billion yuan to build a transnational sourcing center to promote foreign trade and attract overseas purchasers to set up base there, the city government said.

Covering 130,000 sq m, the Shanghai Transnational Sourcing Center will comprise of an international exhibition center and two office buildings.

It will be located at Changfeng Ecological Business Zone in Putuo district, a 2.2-sq-km business area earmarked for the service industry and one of the sites to house corporations' headquarters.

Overseas investment

Beijing used $5.9 billion of overseas investment in the first 11 months of 2008, said the Beijing municipal bureau of commerce.

The amount of paid-in overseas investment for the year will rise beyond $6 billion, a record high, according to the source.

The capital city saw improvement in structure and quality of overseas investment, alongside an increase in its size.

The service sector was the recipient of most of the overseas capital in the city in the first 11 months, said an official of the bureau.

Shanxi road expansion

Shanxi province will invest 243.5 billion yuan for road construction over the next two years, according to a statement released by the Shanxi provincial communications department.

The 48,000-km project is the largest one ever in terms of the investment and construction scale, said Zhang Run, deputy director of the department, adding that about 5 billion yuan of the investment will be financed by new share offerings.

Tibet tourism packages

Tibet's tourism market, battered by riots in March, has cut travel and hotel costs in hopes of luring domestic and international sightseers.

The tourism bureau is promoting a winter tour package, deputy chief Wang Songping said. Tourist destinations in Nyingchi prefecture, which borders India and Myanmar, have cut prices by half, while those in the regional capital Lhasa and in Xigaze prefecture began to lower prices by 20 to 50 percent in late October, Wang said.

Tibet has received about 2.2 million tourists in 2008, sharply down from a record 4 million a year earlier.

Yangtze tunnel open

The first road tunnel under China's longest river, the Yangtze, opened in Hubei province on December 28. It cuts travel time for Wuhan motorists by about 20 minutes.

The 3.63-km, 4-lane tunnel connects Wuchang, where government offices and universities are based to the Hankou business area, reducing driving time from half an hour to 7 minutes.

The tunnel, which can carry about 50,000 vehicles daily, is designed to withstand a one-in-300-year flood and an earthquake measuring up to 6 on the Richter scale.

(China Daily 01/05/2009 page9)