China's provinces speak out; the Governor of Yunnan Province promotes investment to APEC heads: Yunnan--a piece of land with numerous business opportunities. Following are remarks by Mr Xu Rongkai, Governor of Yunnan Province, at the closing banquet of ABAC recently.

• Author: Rongkai, Xu
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT FROM ABAC: YUNNAN

Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen and friends, the 2nd Session of ABAC 2005, convened in the Chinese capital city of Beijing, has concluded today. On this occasion, I recall a verse from a Chinese poem that goes to the effect that "Now comes the best time of the spring when the capital city is immersed in the sea of verdant willows". The Chinese economy, enjoying a sustained, rapid and healthy growth in recent years, has drawn much attention of economists, entrepreneurs and other personages.

As the capital city, Beijing is the ideal place chosen to be the venue of this session. The consultative report, drafted and adopted by the session, is the most important achievement of the session and will be submitted to the APEC Informal Leader's Meeting to be held this year.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my warm congratulations on the success of the meeting. In the meantime, I am grateful to CCPIT for inviting me to this meeting, which gives me a chance to introduce Yunnan Province to the delegates. Through the brief introduction, our friends who have been to Yunnan will have better understanding of Yunnan, and those who have never been to Yunnan will get a general picture of the province.

Yunnan, in Chinese means "the southern tip of colourful clouds". There live 44 million people with an area of 394,000 sq kilometres. According the Chinese culture "colourful clouds" stand for auspiciousness, happiness, finesse and hope.

Generally speaking, Yunnan boasts advantages in three aspects on which Yunnan's future development rely.

Firstly, Yunnan is rich in natural resources. Situated on low-latitude plateau, Yunnan is featured with vertical landforms and topography-dependant climate and is imbued with varieties of bio-resources. With abundant resources, Yunnan is known as the "Kingdom of Plants," "Kingdom of animals," "Home to Flowers," "Home to Medicinal Herbs" and "Gene Bank of Bio-resources". Most of our resources have enormous potential for economic development. Now tobacco and flower industries have become an important part of Yunnan's feature economy. With the exception of maritime resources, Yunnan possesses all sorts of natural resources with high quality and complete types. Through past ten-odd years efforts, more than 60 scenic spots and places of historic interest including over 10 national ones have been constructed. The Old Town of Lijiang and Three Parallel River Area have been respectively listed as sites of World Cultural...