From our archives

Dec 29, 1983

Guidelines reviewed for rural development

Plans for next year's rural work, focusing on improving the responsibility system and stabilizing farmland contracts to encourage farmers to make more rational and effective use of land, were discussed by delegates to a national conference on rural work in Beijing recently.

Up to now, over 90 percent of China's rural households have adopted the responsibility system.

According to the conference, China's agriculture has shifted from the previous concentration on grain crops to a diversified economy combining agriculture, industry and commerce.

Beijing bus riders set record

Beijing's buses have carried almost 3 billion passengers in 1983, roughly 20 percent more than last year, according to the Municipal Public Transportation Service Company.

The company's manager, Zhang Junxiu, attributed the rise to intensive development of the city's suburbs and increases in domestic tourism and business travel, while indicating that the city's transit services still cannot meet the growing needs and buses are still crowded at peak hours.

About 200 new buses and trolley buses were put on the road and eight new lines opened this year, Zhang said. The company now runs 3,600 buses and trolley buses on 143 lines covering 1,728 km.

Boeing 707 lands in Lhasa

A Boeing 707 aircraft with passengers on board arrived in Lhasa on Dec 27 on its maiden flight from Chengdu.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has three Boeing 707 flights on the Chengdu-Lhasa route each week. CAAC has also opened airline services between Lhasa and Xi'an.

Flights to Lhasa have been increased from once a month to six a week.

(China Daily 12/31/2008 page9)