NANNING, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Thursday unveiled a plan to integrate industrial zones in Laibin City at the core area of Pearl River's upstream.
It is a major step taken by Guangxi to develop the upstream regions of Pearl River Delta, one of China's most economically developed areas.
At a press conference held on Thursday, the Laibin City government announced that the first batch of 25 investors to the new city zone signed 14 commercial deals at the opening ceremony, involving total investment of 12.563 billion yuan.
The plan aims to build a new city zone around the junction of three rivers, Hongshui River, Qianjiang River and Liujiang River, based on a river port that is able to accommodate ships with maximum dead weight tonnage (DWT) of 1,000 tons at present and will be raised to 3,000 DWT in near future over operation of Datengxia Project, a key water control project in the downstream river section in Laibin city. With the river port, goods and materials could be shipped to the downstream Pearl River Delta cities like Guangzhou, Foshan, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Besides the river port, the new city area also has convenient connection with several national main trunk roads, highways and highspeed railways to link with Guangxi's industrial central Liuzhou city in the north, and other regional central cities like Guigang, Wuzhou, and Guangxi's capital city Nanning, as well as other major cities in China's southwest region, such as Guiyang, Kunming and Changsha.
Guangxi, a well-known tourism destination in South China, is also a major opening-up outlet to Southeast Asian countries via land ports, sea ports and airports. It is now specified as an important Belt and Road gateway province to combine the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the Silk Road Economic Belt. It has also been the host province of China-ASEAN Expo (CAEXPO) since 2004. Laibin City is a resource-rich major city of Central Guangxi, but relatively less developed. (Edited by Qiu Jun, Qiujun@xinhua.org)
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