Southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has set its
sights on becoming a regional logistics and trading base with the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
It also wants to set up an information exchange center with
ASEAN
"The future development of China-ASEAN regional cooperation
should include Pan-Beibu Bay economic cooperation, the continuing
cooperation with the Mekong River Sub-regional Economic Zone and
the construction of the economic belt from the capital city Nanning
to Singapore," Guangxi Party Secretary Liu Qibao said during a
high-level consultative conference held in Beijing yesterday.
In China's coastal regions, most economic activities are
centered in three economic regions: the Pearl River Delta in the
south, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Bohai Economic Rim in the
north.
Compared with these regions, economic activity in Beibu Bay is
relatively backward.
China's 11th Five-Year Plan for Western Development has
designated the Beibu Bay (Guangxi) economic zone as one of three in
the west where the economy will be developed first.
Comprising Nanning, Beihai, Qinzhou and Fangchenggang, the zone
has 166 shipping berths with an annual handling capacity of 65
million tons. It also has the country's first expressway linked to
Vietnam, an ASEAN member.
"If there is another 200 km of railway, Nanning and Singapore
could be linked," Liu said, adding that airports in Nanning and
Beihai have flights to more than 40 Chinese cities and all major
Southeast Asian cities.
"One of the top issues on the agenda is to cooperatively build
the Nanning-Singapore railway and expressways," Liu said.
He also called for the establishment of a bonded port area
within the zone and a comprehensive bonded zone in Guangxi's
southwestern Pingxiang city, China's "South Gate", to the
China-ASEAN Free Trade Area.
Liu's proposals were echoed by a number of senior officials at
the conference.
Du Ying, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform
Commission, said the development of the Pan-Beibu Bay region is
also significant to the import security of key energies.
Chen Qingtai, the former Party secretary of the Development and
Research Center of the State Council, said the zone's development
should follow the experiences and lessons of other developed
coastal areas to ensure its success.
(China Daily July 24, 2007)