Li said because of China's vast area and huge population, with an
uneven distribution of resources and uneven economic development,
railways are needed for long-distance goods transportation.

By the end of the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1991-1995), China had 62,600
kilometers of railways, which handle 36 per cent of the country's
cargo transport and 39.4 per cent of the passenger transport.

To improve bulk cargo transport and regional economic development, he
said, a number of new railways will be built during the Ninth Five-
Year Plan period (1996-2000).

Some 6,000 kilometers railway, in addition to 3,000 kilometers of
double-track lines and 4,000 kilometers of electrified lines, are
expected to be added during the period, Li said.

By 2000, the total length of railway lines in operation is expected
to reach 68,000 kilometers, with the technical level of the railways
significantly improved, the premier said.

Li noted short-distance transport should focus on highways, railway
stations with inadequate passenger and cargo flow should be closed to
support highway transport.

Li said roads are the foundation of the transport industry. By the
end of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, China had 1.16 million kilometers
of roads and highways. A national road net work has taken shape
reaching 97 per cent of townships and 80 per cent of villages.

During the Ninth Five-Year Plan 110,000 kilometers of roads will be
added to the net work, including 6,000 kilometers of expressways
Sixty per cent of them will be in Central and West China,the premier
said.

Feasibility studies must be done before building, with economic
benefits being taken into account, Li said.

China had 438 deep-water berths capable of accommodating 10,000-dwt
ships by the end of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, Li said, with a
combined annual handling capacity of 700 million tons.

The country plans to add 100 berths for 10,000-dwt ships with an
additional handling capacity of more than 200 million tons in the
Ninth Five-Year Plan.

Air transport saw rapid expansion during the Eighth Five-Year Plan,
with passenger handling capacity growing 25 per cent annually, Li
said.

A network of airports has been built in the past decade in most
municipalities, and provincial and autonomous region capitals.

Domestic airlines should accelerate the training of pilots, Li said.

The policy of "safety first, normal operations and quality service"
must be adopted by domestic airlines as their policy, Li said.

The transfer of technicians who undertake major scientific projects
will be more closely managed to prevent the disclosure of technical
know-how and policy secrets, and to protect intellectual property
rights.

In a notice issued, the State Science and Technology Commission
(SSTC)--China's top scientific administration--said that based on
State laws and regulations, technicians may transfer to various
economic sectors of their own free will.

Governments, institutions and enterprises can give the green light to
technicians who volunteer to transfer and whose specialities are not
applicable to the units they are working for.

Yet institutions and enterprises should have greater control over
technicians who are under-taking key State scientific projects. These
organizations shouldn't allow technicians to leave before they
complete their research projects. Measures need to be taken in order
to prevent disclosure of technical know-how and to limit the threat
to the interests and security of the country, the notice said.

Those who left their posts and caused economic loss to the original
departments or divulged technical know-how, should be held
responsible.

According to the SSTC notice, institutions can sign agreements with
their managers or technicians involving technical know-how, and
prohibit them from working in other companies, including foreign-
funded firms that manufacture similar products or run similar
businesses. The prohibition period can not exceed three years.

Rational exchanges of technicians have played an active role in
restructuring scientific institutions, and in the transfer of
scientific research findings to production, said Shang Yong, director
of the Policy and Reform Department under the SSTC.

But problems have also occurred in the transfer of technicians over
the past few years, he said.

Fore example, some technicians involved in research for national
defense and military projects quit their work without permission of
the authorities, causing projects to be suspended and programme
secrets divulged to other institutions and enterprises.



BIOTECHNOLOGY NEWS


The years of Biotechnology High-Tech R & D in China: An Overview

The Chinese Hi-Tech R & D programme (the 863 programme) has now been
underway for 10 years (1986-1996). Biotechnology has been a very
important part of this programme, and has been given much financial
support throughout, its main aims being to improve human health and
satisfy nutritional requirements into the next century. Much has been
accomplished in these 10 years in molecular biology, cell biology and
clinical science, and this has been made possible by the
establishment of a series of modern biotechnology laboratories in
some of the top Chinese institutes and universities, including:

* The Institute of Virology at the Chinese Academy of Preventive
Medicine

*The Institute of Biochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences

* The Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology at the Chinese Academy
of Sciences

*Peking University

*Fudan University

* The Biotechnology Research Centre at the Chinese Academy of
Agricultural Sciences.

IN addition, a number of industrial bases have been established in
Beijing , Shanghai and Shenzhen, to provide an interface between
industry an research. Major concerns in the field of biotechnology
have been:

1. Breeding of new varieties of domestic animals, and of plants
possessing high yield, superior quality, and stress
tolerance/resistance.

Over the last decade Professor Yuan Longping and his colleagues have
used photoperiod-sensitive and thermo-sensitive genetic male
sterility (PGMS and TGMS) strains of rice to breed 10 new improved
sterile strains and 6 new, stable, high-yield recombinant strains
which can provide a 10% increase in productivity per annum. 200,000
hectares of these high-yield varieties have been introduced into the
field, and have already contributed to increased food production.

Additional research with insect resistance in cotton, another key
crop in china, has led to the synthesis, and introduction into the
field, of a Bt toxin gene, resulting in levels of resistance of up to
80%.

2. New medicines, vaccines, and gene therapy techniques.

During this period Professor Hou Yunde and Professor Gu Jianren have
continued to lead research teams investigating recombinant vaccines,
polypeptide drugs and gene therapy techniques. Both recombinant
hepatitis B vaccine and recombinant human interferon αlb have
completed phase Ⅲ clinical trials and have been approved by the
Chinese FDA. They have now both moved into production phase.

3. Protein engineering and molecular design technology.

Protein engineering research has provided several new forms of
insulin with improved efficacy and reduced immunological problems.

Generally, Chinese scientists have achieved much with regard to
isolating and cloning plant, animal and human genes, in particular
they have completed a very significant high resolution physical map
of the rice genome.

These and other successes continue to provide Chinese scientists with
the confidence to compete in the international field of biotechnology
into the 21st century.



ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province--The local government has devoted great
attention to the protection of the environment while developing
tourism in China's famous forest park.

Their goal for the millennium is to bid farewell to chimneys, and
keep the mountains greener and the sky bluer.

A special regulation on environmental protection issued by the
People's Government of Hunan Province's Zhangjiajie City stipulates
that the control of air pollution and the quality of drinking water
in the city must meet the first-class standards laid down by the
State, which are higher than the national average.

In the next three years, the city's coal-fired boilers must be
replaced with oil, gas or electric boilers in order to reduce noxious
emissions.

This year, the local government closed five factories, including two
paper mills and a cement plant, which produced large amounts of
pollutants, said Ren Chaodong, vice-mayor of the city.

"A clean environment is an advantage in attracting more tourists,
especially as our people's living standard has been improved," Ren
said.

Ren said that the development of the tourist industry meant the
environment couldn't be sacrificed for the sake of economic
development.

Located 400 kilometers north west of provincial capital Changsha,
Zhangjiajie has a history that is synonymous with the development of
tourism.

The national forest park, covering 369 square kilometers, boasts rich
tourism resources in a splendid natural environment.

In the past five years, it has hosted more than 1.2 million tourists
from home and abroad each year.

By the end of next year, another two million tourists are expected,
including 20,000 overseas travellers, and tourism revenue is expected
to reach about 800 million yuan ($96 million).

To reach the target, the local government has adopted several
measures to improve tourism.

Scenic spots, hotels and restaurants are to clearly mark prices and
refrain from cheating tourists in other ways.

A joint supervisory team, including the department of tourism, public
security, forest police, and industry and commerce, has been
patrolling the tourism routes in the forest park to penalize illegal
tour guides and to enforce forest fire prevention orders, Ren said.

"We have made progress in the development of the tourism industry in
the past 10 years, and we will not let the illegal tour guides damage
the good reputation Zhangjiajie has enjoyed as a tourist destination
in the past years," Ren said.

In view of the spectacular expansion of China's mobile communications
networks, a senior telecommunications official predicted that China's
mobile phone subscribers will exceed 30 million by 2000.

This prediction is in sharp contrast to the previous forecast of 18
million by the end of this century, outlined last year by the
Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT).

Yuan Mingfu, deputy director of the Mobile Communications Bureau
under MPT, told that the Chinese mobile phone market has great
potential, adding that market planning could not catch up with the
tremendous growth of the market.

Yuan's predication is based on the fact that by mid-July this year,
China had over 10 million mobile phone subscribers, the world's third
largest mobile phone population after the United States and Japan. In
the first half of this year alone, China registered nearly 2.9
million new users.

Since 1987, the total number of mobile phone subscribers in China has
grown on average by 160 per cent a year, one of the highest rates in
the world.

The world's major telecom giants including Motorola, Nokia and
Ericsson have their eyes fixed firmly on China and are competing
fiercely for a bigger market share. Such competition is benefiting
customers as it has resulted in a fall in mobile phone prices in many
cities.

While the rapid, steady growth of the Chinese national economy is the
main driving force behind the expansion of mobile communications
systems, Yuan said, the growth in the total number of subscribers
will to a large extent be decided by how much capacity
telecommunications departments can provide for the public."

In recent years, demand has been so great that telecommunications
companies have never had to worry that their mobile phone switching
capacities would be excessive.

In China, there are now 0.8 mobile phones per 100 people. compared
with 15 in the United States and 10 in Japan and Britain.

Yuan said that this reflects the huge potential of China's mobile
phone market in the future.

The Beijing based People's Post and Telecommunications News, an MPT-
funded newspaper, has reported a rapid expansion in mobile phone
users in both economically developed eastern coastal regions and
underdeveloped western regions in the past few months.

In some coastal provinces such as Guangdong, one mobile per family is
no longer enough, all family members want to have their own.

In Tianjin, the number of mobile phone customers exceeded a record
200,000 on August 7, putting the city in fifth place in the mainland,
after Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

An official with the Tianjin Municipal Post and Telecommunications
Bureau said that after eight years of expansion, the city's mobile
phone capacity has reached 300,000.