From our archives

August 5, 1983

To produce more farm machines

The Ministry of Machine-Building has chosen 150 leading heavy industry enterprises to produce small farm machinery, which is in bad demand by the country's 800 million farmers.

If more machinery can be introduced to process primary products, we will have our value raised by these processed goods, said vice-minister He Guangyuan.

Self-innovation boosts production

The Mudanjiang Petroleum Machinery Plant has got a leading position in the industry as it has undertaken 272 separate improvement projects and introduced nine major new items that fill in industry gaps in the past 18 months.

As profits in the first half reached 436,000 yuan, director Zhou Zhikun expects the annual profits to grow to 1 million yuan from 315,000 last year.

The plant's products meet American Petroleum Institute standards and thus qualify for export.

Houses available for individual purchase

The central government has designated four cities, including Siping in Jilin province, Changzhou in Jiangsu province, Shashi in Hubei province and Zhengzhou in Henan province, to experiment with a new method of selling government-built houses to individuals, in a bid to recover part of the construction cost.

So farm more than 260 families have bought apartments at prices of less than 30 percent of construction cost. For example, a primary school teacher in Siping bought a 51 sq m apartment with 2,421 yuan.

(China Daily 08/07/2008 page11)