Tianjin's electronics industry reported gross profits of RMB2.53bn for the first half of 2001, with a gross profit margin of 10.33 per cent. The sector expects sales to increase from US$10bn in the year 2000 to US$30bn in 2005. Tianjin and Beijing accounted for a combined 56 per cent of China's total mobile phone production in the year 2000. Motorola Tianjin Co reported output of RMB16.2bn for the first half of 2001. The company produced 13m mobile phones in the year 2000, holding a 31 per cent share of China's mobile phone market. South Korea-based Samsung Group has set up a code division multiple access mobile phone plant as well as a research and development centre in Tianjin. The number of mobile phone subscribers in China reached 120.6m at the end of July 2001, ranking first in the world.
Copyright © Financial Times Information
Govt OK's return of 5 Red Army faction kin Yomiuri The government will issue temporary travel permits to allow five family members of former Red Army faction members who hijacked a Japan Airlines jet and flew to Pyongyang in 1970 to return to Japan, government sources said Sunday. The permits will be issued by the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, and the five are expected to return to Japan as early as the end of this month, according to the sources. Under the Passport Law, such a permit is issued when a party has lost a passport or visa. Applications for the permits have already been submitted by sponsors of the family members. Though applications for such permits are not normally accepted from third parties, the Foreign Ministry concluded that a clause in the Passport Law made it possible to do so. According to sources, the five returning to Japan are: Kyoko Tanaka, 44, wife of Yoshimi Tanaka, who is currently on trial in Japan, and their eldest daughter, who is 22; Emiko Kaneko, 45, the wife of Shiro Akagi, who remains in North Korea; the 21-year-old daughter of the late Takamaro Tamiya, the leader of the group; and the 23-year-old daughter of Takahiro Konishi. The applications for the permits were submitted in November by the director general of a group supporting the former Red Army faction members and their families in North Korea, according to the sources. The director general submitted the application forms along with the necessary photos and copies of family registers, the sources said. The Foreign Ministry was initially reluctant to accept the applications through a third party, claiming the five would be able to submit the materials themselves at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. However, after looking into their claims that they would be unable to leave North Korea without the permits, the ministry decided to apply Article 19 of the Passport Law, which provides for the issuance of a temporary travel permit through application by a third party, and to issue them on humanitarian grounds. Tanaka and Kaneko were placed on an international wanted list in 1993 for alleged violations of the Passport Law. Police said the two will be arrested immediately upon arrival in Japan. Four of the nine hijackers are still living in Pyongyang; in all, 32 of the hijackers and their family members are in North Korea, according to sources. If the five are able to return to Japan, the remaining family members of the hijackers are expected to follow the suit, according to the sources. During the Japan-North Korea normalization talks, Tokyo asked Pyongyang to repatriate the hijackers. Washington is also demanding that Pyongyang deport the hijackers in exchange for removing North Korea from its list of countries supporting terrorism. However, a Foreign Ministry senior official said such extraditions would not immediately follow the return of the five family members.
Copyright © Asia Intelligence Wire
China is investing heavily in the upgrade and expansion of its ports, including the major ones at Shanghai, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Tianjin, and Guangzhou, in an effort to cope with increased cargo volume brought about by the economy's rapid growth. Although China's coastal ports last year reported a 16.3% rise in throughput to 1.29bn tons, the Ministry of Communication (MOC) indicated a lack of equipment for unloading crude oil and iron ore, aside from other important container-handling systems. Foreign expertise on port management and cargo-handling is a major part of China's programme, with the Port of Singapore Authority currently engaged in an 800m yuan (S$170m) container terminal project in conjunction with the Guangzhou Harbour Bureau, in addition to three other joint projects with other Chinese ports. By 2020, China hopes to have some 1,100 deep-water coastal ports and an influx of 2.8bn tonnes of cargo.
Abstracted from: The Straits Times, Singapore
Copyright 2001: Financial Times Information. All rights reserved.
Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)
Tianjin, 10 September: Construction of the first phase of Penglai 19-3 Oilfield, the largest offshore oilfield in China, has commenced in the southern Bohai Sea.
The oilfield, with reserves of 600m tons, is believed to be the second-largest complete oilfield after the famous Daqing Oilfield, which was discovered in 1959 in northeast China.
The Penglai 19-3 Oilfield covers an area of 50 square kilometres, and lies at a depth of between 900 and 1,400 metres near Longkou coastline in Shandong Province. It has an oil layer of 150 metres deep on average.
It was jointly prospected by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the Phillips Oil Corporation of the United States in 1999.
The two sides signed a contract on construction of the project on 15 March this year. The Chinese side takes 51 per cent of the stake, with the remainder held by the United States.
By the end of 2002, 24 oil wells are expected to start production, with a combined annual output of 2.5m tons. The field's annual output is expected to reach 8.5m tons by 2005. By then, the output of the Bohai Oilfield as a while will top 20m tons, making it China's largest offshore crude producer.
China's oil reserves total 94bn tons, with most located on land. The country began to seek overseas cooperation for offshore oil development in 1979, as the output of many onshore oilfields had begun to decline.
Source: Xinhua news agency, Beijing, in English 0009 gmt 10 Sep 01
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.
Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)
Beijing, 6 September: Beijing Mayor Liu Qi said Thursday [6 September] that this host city of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games will be turned into a garden-like metropolis in seven years.
Beijing will be a green city with a blue sky and clean water, the mayor told a forum on forest and environmental protection.
"With green vegetation and flowers everywhere, Beijing will be a place pleasing to both the eye and mind."
To reach that goal, the mayor said the municipal government is drafting, among others, an action plan to build a 10,000 sq.km. green ecological shelter belt in the mountainous areas in the suburbs.
A green shelter belt totalling 125 sq.km. will be built inside the city, while 1,230 sq.km. of areas along its five major rivers and 10 highways and expressways will be planted with trees in the coming seven years, he said.
By 2008, the forest coverage rate for hilly areas in rural Beijing will reach 70 per cent while the vegetation rate for the urban area will be 45 per cent, he said.
The Chinese government has decided to turn green 7.8m ha of land in 75 counties in Beijing and its neighbouring Tianjin, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Shanxi province in a bid to erect a shelter belt for the capital city.
To reduce industrial pollution, Beijing has earmarked 5bn US dollars for environmental projects during the 1998-2002 period, and the investment will reach a record-breaking 6.6bn US dollars in the five years before 2008.
The figure represents four to five per cent of the city's gross domestic product for the same period. The mayor said the second Shaanxi-Beijing natural gas pipeline will be laid to pump gas into Beijing, which will increase the supply of natural gas for Beijing to 5bn cubic meters by 2008.
"Clean energy will then account for 80 per cent of the total energy consumed, similar to that of developed countries."
Beijing will introduce the exhaust gas emission standards European II and III by 2004 and 2007, respectively, so that the amount of exhaust gas emissions from new cars running in Beijing will be cut by 60 per cent, he said.
Liu said 90 per cent of the buses and 70 per cent of taxis in Beijing will be fuelled by natural gas by 2008.
The city's subway and light railway systems under construction, which total 100 km in length, will be operational by the time the games starts.
The city plans to double the transportation capacity of its buses, trolley-buses, and subway systems by 2008, which stand at 9. 86m and 2.66m, respectively.
The mayor said the city will continue to improve its industrial mix, relocate polluting firms from within the city proper, as they have in the several past years, in a bid to cut industrial pollution in the coming years.
Beijing's Capital Iron and Steel Group Co has been ordered to cut its iron and steel production by 2m tons in the coming year.
Beijing plans to build 12 more waster water treatment plants before 2008, increasing its treatment capacity to 2.8m tons per day, or 90 per cent of the total, the mayor said.
By that time, half of the waste water will be recycled, he added.
Source: Xinhua news agency, Beijing, in English 1533 gmt 6 Sep 01
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.