Yangling, an agricultural high-tech development zone in northwest China's Shaanxi Province is set to be China's agricultural Silicon Valley, according to a senior provincial official.
Chen Zongxing, vice-governor of Shaanxi Province and director of Yangling agricultural demonstration zone, said the country's only state-level agricultural development zone had earned economic benefits of 200 billion yuan (US$25 billion) and seen the world's first cloning of a live goat from adult body cells.
Set up in 1997, Yangling Demonstration Zone for High-tech Agricultural Industries has become one of the most economically dynamic areas in western China, attracting over 460 registered enterprises with an economic plan led by industries, such as water-economizing irrigation, biological pharmacy and agricultural product processing.
Yangling has also taken an international lead in the research of wheat breeding, dry farming, livestock embryo cultivating, and the management of water and soil erosion.
(Xinhua News Agency July 30, 2002)
