Zhanjiang Municipality is located in the southwest of Guangdong Province and the southernmost of China's mainland, the Leizhou Peninsula that is the interjunction of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan. Covering a land area of 13,000 square kilometers, Zhanjiang is home to 7.07 million people. It exercises jurisdiction over two cities at county level, two counties and four districts. Zhanjiang has one economic and technological development district at the state level and five experimental zones of economic development at the province level.

Zhanjiang Municipality was among the first coastal cities opening to outside world and on the list of China's top 50 cities in terms of overall economic power. Zhanjiang had won the honors of " National Model City in Support of Servicemen and Their Famility Members", "National Model City of Reaching Greenery Coverage Standard", "A Clean City of Guangdong Province", " A City of Cultrual Achievement in Guangdong Province", and "China's Top Tourists City", just to list a few.

Zhanjiang is dotted with estuaries and habors, famous for their size, loction and depth. The inner coastline of Zhanjiang Port is as long as 241 kilometers, four times that in Rottadam - the largest port in the world. 97 kilometers of its inner coastline could be the location of deepwater berths. There are a total of 22 piers with a total of 174 berths at various scales and annual throughput capacity of 42.12 million tons. Besides the leading Zhanjiang Port, a string of small and medium-sized ports are located around Leizhou Peninsular, thus forming a synergy to each other.

Zhanjiang is at the low latitude to the south of tropic of cancer, an area of tropical and subtropical marine climate without cold winter and hot summer. In Zhanjiang, the annual average temperature is 23C; the annual sunlight time totals 18.6422 million hours, making Zhanjiang one of the regions rich in thermal resources. ¡¡¡¡

Zhanjiang is blessed with a wealth of resources in agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal husbandry. It is also one of the four important sugar cane plantations, the largest plantation of gum tree and agave, and the largest preserve area of mangrove in China. Zhanjiang is famous for its popular fruits like pineapple, mango and red orange. Furthermore, Zhanjiang ranked the first among all the five northbound vegetable transport bases in terms of land area for planting vegetables, production output and output value. Now Zhanjiang had a total of 21 base farms of tropical crops, fruit, aquactic products, animal husbandry and forestry. In Guangdong and even in China, Zhanjiang is an important production base of agave, rubber, sugar cane, vegetables, pineapple, banana, mango, red orange and gum tree as well as grain-saving animal husbandry.

Zhanjiang had 99,100 hectares of inshore tidal flat and 557,300 hectares of shallow sea. It also boasted of more than 520 species of fish, 547 species of seashells and 28 species of shrimps, leading in Guangdong for consecutive years regarding its output of aquactic products. The output of sea-cultivated pearls took up two-third of China's total and the output of prawns took up 40% of the total in Guangdong. Zhanjiang had 4,035 hectares of saltfield with annual output capacity of 150,000 tons of crude salt, making up 50% or above of the total in Guangdong. In addition, it had 6000 hectares of saltfield to be tapped.

Within the territory of Zhanjiang over 33 kinds of minerals had been discovered with 155 reserve spots worth of exploitation. Its reserve and quality of kaolin, diatomite, vocalnic clay and peat were among the leading positions in Guangdong, especially kaolin that is high in grade and large in reserve with a significant prospect for exploitation.

Within the sea territory of Zhanjiang, the offshore continental shelf in the north of South China Sea is abundant in reserves of natural gas and crude oil, one of the four major pools in the world. It was estimated in this area that the reserve of crude oil and natural gas amounted to 14.5 billion tons and 13,200 billion cubic meters respectively. China's largest natural gas field - Ya 13-1 is located here with a reserve of 100 billion cubic meters. Zhanjiang-based CNOOC Nanhai West Corporations (CNOOC - China National Offshore Oil Corp.), supplying gas to Hong Kong, had discovered 5 natural gas fields and 13 natural gas buildups with an identified reserve of 350 billion cubic meters; 12 crude oil fields and 4 crude oil buildups with an identified reserve of 240 million tons. Now the company was working on 5 crude oil fields and one natural gas field.

Zhangjiang is bestowed abudnant tourism resources composed of sea, agriculture and places of historical interests. Donghai Island and Jizhao Bay are two tourists' resorts at province level. Nansan Island, Wuyang Seashore and Xuwen Baisha Bay are tourists' resort at municipal level. Lake Huguangyan is one of the famous resorts in Guangdong and listed as national geological park. The State Conservation Zone of Mangrove in Zhanjiang is the largest protective area of mangrove with the most species in the mainland of China, covering 20,000 hectares. Xuwen County under the jurisdiction of Zhanjiang Municipality has the largest natural coral breeding area which is the only one preserved the best in the offshore of China's mainland.

Leizhou City at county level, which is a National Historical City, has lots of places of historical interests. Zhanjiang also has a Subtropical Botanical Garden with a multitude of rare and precious plants. Hedi Reservoir, one of the largest reservoirs in Guangdong, was also built in Zhanjiang. All of these had revealed a promising prospect of tourism industry in Zhanjiang.

Zhanjiang is the location of Zhanjiang Ocean University, Guangdong Medical College and Zhanjiang Normal University, second to Guangzhou in terms of number of higher education institutes. The number of professional technicians in Zhanjiang amounted to over 90,000 people. Moreover, Zhanjiang had a total of 48 R&D institutes, 5 engineering technology development centers and 2 technology experiment bases.

Zhanjiang is one of the 47 cities whose environment is under state protection. The urban air quality remains at least satisfactory for the all year round. With blue sky, crystal water and beautiful landscape, Zhanjiang is on the list of China's top 40 cities regarding insfrastructure and a National Model City of Ecological Balance.

Zhanjiang has eight pillar industries and four production bases. Specifically, the eight pillar industries include petrochemical, inshore exploitaition of crude oil and natural gas, papermaking, processing of agricultural and aquactic products, feed, texitile, electronic appliances and machinery. The four production bases are refered to petrochemical production base, export processing base of agricultural and aquactic products, high-grade paper making base and manufacturing base of small household eletronic appliances. Some large engineering projects are going on, such as an oilrefining plant with production capacity of five million tons and investment of RMB two billion yuan, a wood pulp plant with production capacity of 700,000 tons and investment of RMB nine billion yuan, and a sea-cultivated base - a project on the State 863 Scheme. Additionally, efforts are going on to prepare for the construction of a steel plant with production capacity of 10 million tons in cooperation with Shaoguan Steel Corporation.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Corp.), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China National Offshore Oil Corp. have started or expanded projects in Zhanjiang. Russian Corporation, UPM-Kymmene Group, Central Texitiles (Hong Kong) Ltd., China Fuxing Paper Company,Guangdong Yuecai Investment Company,Dalian Huanong Group Limited, Liaoning Fuhong Group,and Shunfen International (Hong Kong) Group had invested a total of RMB 15 billion yuan in Zhanjiang. Additionally, lots of foeign investors and privately-owned enterprises acquired or merged the state-own or collectively-ownd enterprises in Zhanjiang.

General Secretary Hu Jintao inspected Zhanjiang in April 2003, inspiring some state government departments to support the economic development of Zhanjiang. The State Council had approved the registration of Aoli Oil Power Plant with installation capacity of 1.2 million kilowatts and an investment of RMB four billion yuan. The state railway authority approved the operation of seven pairs of train lines exclusively between Zhanjiang Port and the Steel Plants in southwest China. The state planning and transportation departments also expedited the evaluating and approving process of dredging project of 300,000-ton-class waterway in Zhanjiang Port. Preparation is gearing up for the construction of the wood pulp plant with production capacity of 700,000 tons. Guangdong Provincial Commettee of CPC and Guangdong Provincial Government greatly support the economic development of Zhanjiang through the leverage of policies, investment projects and finance.

The six sectors worth of capital input in Zhanjiang

In the coming three to five years, Zhanjiang will intensify its efforts to build or plan to build over thirty projects of industry or infrastructure with a total investment of over RMB 40 billion yuan. Zhanjiang is becoming a magnet to external investment in Guangdong Province. For those who want to do business in Zhanjiang, they shall take notice of the industry policies of the government as set out below:

1. Petrochemical and steel industries are encouraged to develop by making advantage of Zhanjiang Port;

2. It is encouraged to invest in production of upper-stream and dowmstream products when the important industry projects are under construction;

3. It is encouraged to engage in agriculture and deep processing business by making use of the wealth of ocean and agricultural resources.

4. It is encouraged to develop new products by drawing on the resources of previous state-owned enterprises;

5. It is encouraged to develop logistics industry;

6. It is encouraged to set up business in the industry park.

Editor: Catherine