Trade fair scheduled in Harbin targets industrial base revival

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 02, 2004

Trade fair scheduled in Harbin targets industrial base revival

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About 110,000 domestic and overseas business people will take part in an international trade fair in northeast China this June and organizers say the event will help the country restructure its old industrial base.

The 15th China Harbin Fair for Trade and Economic Cooperation will be held from June 15 to 19 in the capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, organizers announced here at a news conference.

Vice-Minister of Commerce Zhang Zhigang said the trade fair would greatly boost China's strategy to restructure its rust belt industrial base in the region.

China launched the strategy to rejuvenate its traditional industrial centers in the three northeast provinces and other parts of the country in a bid to turn rust belts into modern industrial zones.

The state leaders consider the northeast industrial base revival an important long term strategy after the reform and opening-up drive began in the late 1970s and the western development policy five years ago.

The northeast region, including Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces contributed China's first batch of steel, machine tools, locomotives and planes after the founding of New China in 1949 but many of the state-owned enterprises have been losing money over the past 20 years.

Organizers said the fair would establish a Russian exhibition hall and hold a China-Russia forum and meetings for Chinese and Russia traders.

The Harbin trade event will have a "positive influence" on China's global trade, especially our trade and economic cooperation with Russia, other CIS states and Northeast Asian countries, Zhang Zhigang said at the news conference.

Located in northeast China, Heilongjiang is an important base of China's commodity grain, energy, equipment and petrochemical industries with a 3,000 kilometer-plus border with Russia.

Trade Representative of the Russia Federation in China, Sergey Tsyplakov, told Xinhua at the news conference that Russia has always attached great importance to its trade with China and both sides met last month in Vladivostok to discuss Russia's participation in the event.

Tsyplakov said Russia's bilateral trade with China had increased by 30 percent year on year in the first two months this year, thus creating a favorable foundation to attain the goal set by both sides to raise bilateral trade volume to 20 billion US dollars in 2005.

Wang Limin, deputy governor of Heilongjiang, said more than 100companies among the 500 world top enterprises, well-known multinational companies, and large enterprises would attend the fair.

This year's fair will feature 2,000 indoor standard booths and 20,000 square meters of outdoor exhibition area. Around 10,000 overseas guests from about 100 countries and regions will participate in the fair, according to the organizing committee.

The organizing committee said the fair would display a number of projects of the industrial base revival cooperative projects, including high-tech products, furniture and household goods, machinery and electrical products, pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals,and textiles.

Jointly sponsored by the Heilongjiang provincial government andHarbin city government, the previous 14 fairs attracted about one million participants from some 80 countries and regions with related trade volume totaling 70 billion US dollars.

Source: Xinhua

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