After several decades of effort, rural Beijing is now ready for another economic and social make-over to go along with the urban part of the Chinese capital, he said.

The downtown and rural Beijing should henceforth be considered as a whole in establishing policies related to the city's general development plan, infrastructure construction, industrial layout, market expansion, bio-environment protection, and social security distribution, said he.

The gross domestic product (GDP) for rural Beijing last year is expected to reach 61.5 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion), up 12.3 percent over the year 2000. Last year's overall GDP increase for Beijing as a whole is estimated at around 11 percent.

And, for the first time ever, the annual per capita disposable income of Beijing farmers climbed above 5,000 yuan (US$603.9).

"Suburban Beijing no longer lags far behind the general development of the city, but is an increasingly more harmonious component of the picture of Beijing as a vigorous city marching steadily to become an international metropolis," said Liu.

Moreover, the plan to more closely link the development of rural Beijing with that of downtown Beijing is imperative for rural Beijing's future development.

"Our plan is to successfully transfer at least 50,000 Beijing farmers from their traditional scattered planting operations into modern industrialized agricultural businesses this year," said Liu.

In line with this change, the development of the city's 33 designated satellite cities will be further stepped up, and the municipal government will provide social security to farmers, who work in rural industries and live in satellite cities.

(China Daily January 21, 2002)