China's southernmost province of Hainan Island, home to 3,080 medicinal plants, is attracting domestic and overseas investors with its great potential for developing the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry.

At a recent business conference held in the provincial capital Haikou, investors both from home and abroad signed agreements for 14 new pharmaceutical projects, with a total investment of some 7.158 billion yuan (US$873 million).

Statistics show that since the beginning of this year, investors from the United States, Japan, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Singapore, as well as from the Hong Kong and Taiwan regions, have made huge investments in Hainan to build more than 50 pharmaceutical plants.

One major project was a Peptide medicines production base to beset up in Haikou jointly by the Hainan Zhonghe Pharmaceutical Co. Limited and the US-based ACT Company. With a total investment of US$550 million, the base is expected to be the largest in Asia and Europe once completed.

Hainan Island is famous for its huge reserves of betel nut and betel palm. According to historical records, the betel palm growing in Hainan is the country's best and has always been a major income source for the local people and government.

Even in ancient times, more than 500 herbal medicines had been found on the island, of which 250 were used as common ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine.

Hainan Province, which has jurisdiction over more than two million sq km of ocean, also has great potential to tap in its rich marine medicinal resources.

According to a pharmaceutical development plan formulated by the Hainan provincial government, the province will focus on the research and development of high-tech-based marine medicines in the next decade.

Sources said that the Marine Medicines Research Center in Haikou had collected 97 samples of seawater, beach sand and mud, as well as marine animals and plants for its research. The researchers have so far acquired 890 bacteria and 1,731 microorganisms which could be used for marine medicine development, they added.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2003)