|
"Free port zone" and "border trade zone" should be set up at
both ends of the China section of the new Eurasian continental
bridge, and some areas along the section would be turned into a
land economic belt of a free trade zone type.
A number of deputies to China's top legislature at the current
session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), have set
forth two separate motions in this regard. These legislators, who
raised the proposals after nearly a year of down-to-earth and
penetrating study and serious investigations, come mainly from the
cities of Lianyungang, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Xi'an, Baoqi, Lanzhou
and Urumqi along the continental corridor.
One of the proposals calls for a free port zone to be set up
around the city of Lianyungang in east China's Jiangsu Province,
while some other motions call for opening a border trade zone
around the Alataw Pass, in the farthest west of the northwestern
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The new Eurasian continental bridge, the cheapest and fastest
Asia-Europe land rail route, starting from the coastal city of
Lianyungang to the east, and going a long, long way westward to its
terminal at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands to the west.
The pass of Alataw in Xinjiang is situated at the western tip of
the continental bridge section in China.
The 10,900 km continental bridge launched on December 1, 1992
has brought benefits to coastal regions in China. Lianyungang port,
for example, now handles over 90 percent of the trans-border rail
container cargo volume from China's coastal ports.
Meanwhile, legislators in their proposals urge setting up an
international fund and a "development and construction bank" of the
economic belt so as to speed up the formation of a regional banking
center, and a new, special administrative agency mechanism is
expected to emerge on the basis of the existing coordinating body
to coordinate overall development efforts.
(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2004)
|
