China's largest "medicine valley", or life science park, will be built in Jiangsu Province, at a cost of 20 billion yuan (2.42 billion U.S. dollars), sources said Tuesday in Shanghai.

The valley, located in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai, will cover an area of nine square kilometers. Core research areas of the bio-tech park will be ecology, life and biology.

Famous colleges and institutes such as Qinghua University and Beijing University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Medical Science will work together in research of bio-pharmaceuticals, modernized traditional Chinese medicine and natural medicine.

Sources said they will divide the park into five zones including a bio-tech industrial zone, a bio-tech incubator and an international medical care zone.

The park, designed by renowned Western designing institutes, will be completed within the next decade. Some 166.7 hectares of the area will be bases for herbal medicine.

(China Daily December 19, 2001)