The Jinggangshan Airport in east China's Jiangxi Province opened on Tuesday morning with its first group of passengers flying in from Beijing, the local government has announced.

With an investment of 190 million yuan (US$15.83 million), the airport, located at the foot of Jinggangshan Mountain in Taihe County, is able to handle 280,000 passengers and 400 tons of cargo per year.

The opening of the airport will inject new energy to the development of local tourism, which is of great importance to the economic development of this old revolutionary base, as it brings Jinggangshan closer to the rest of China and shortens the travel time from Beijing to Jinggangshan to just two hours, said the head of the airport.

Covering an area of 660.87 square kilometers, the Jinggang Mountains is known as the cradle of the Chinese revolution, where Chairman Mao Zedong and his comrades established the first rural base for the revolution led by the Communist Party of China.

Statistics from the local tourism bureau show that visitors from home and abroad increased at 20 percent a year as "Red travel" has boomed in recent years in the Jinggang Mountains, where there are many sites featuring the history of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (1928-1937).

The sites include a mint of the Red Army, the Jinggang Mountain Revolution Museum, a Red Army Village, which occupies an area of 10,000 square meters, and the Jinggang Mountain Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery.

(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2004)