Both the Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China Jia Qinglin and the Mayor of Beijing Liu Qi attended the ceremony.

Liu said that the construction of the micro-electronic center marks the start of the city's strategy in the development of the high-tech sector with the IT industry as the backbone.

He pointed out that the national capital has the benefit of technology, personnel and information on economic development, providing ideal conditions for the take-off of the IT industry.

According to the comprehensive development plan of the micro- electronic center, it will take 10 years to build 20 state-of-the-art integrated circuit (IC) production lines in the center.

The municipal government has worked out preferential policies to nurture the high-tech incubator, which include land requisition, tax reduction and loans.

The Beijing Xunchuang Co., jointly founded by Beijing Electronics Holding Co., the Beijing Oriental Electronics Group. Holding Co., Beijing Kingstron Electronic Plant and the Asia Pacific Technology Development Holding Co., was the first company to settle in the micro-electronic center.

The company's initial investment worth US$200 million will be spent on building an IC production line, which is expected to yield an output value of 1.3 billion yuan (US$156 million) a year.

Later this month, the Huaxia Semiconductor Holding Co., a joint venture of the Capital Iron and Steel Plant, will invest US$1.3 billion to build two production lines in the center. The annual output value of the plant will reach 5 billion yuan (US$602 million).

In the next stage, some 200 IC research and development companies will be built in the micro-electronic center, which is expected to lift the city's micro-electronic product output value to 30 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion) in five years. The industry's output value in 1999 was less than 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million).

(People's Daily 12/17/2000)