It was released earlier this week on the City Construction Conference that Qingdao plans to build 6 key projects highlighting Olympics and a regional central city in the year 2003.

The city's construction this year will highlight the demands of the Olympics as well as improving pe ople's quality of life. The city will achieve a scheduled added value of 17.5 billion yuan, a fixed assets investment of 14 billion yuan, and an acturally used foreign capital of 20 million dollars in an effort to ensure the smooth development of all of the construction projects.

Local government will adopt a multiple- investment policy to raise funds for the construction projects; also to adopt the management system of two-level governments,three-level management and four-level network to improve management efficiency.

The 6 key construction projects mainly cover road building, housing construction, environmental protection, the Olympic projects, small town construction and social benefit construction.

The urban road network, including 4 north to south expressways and 5 east to west expressways, will be further improved. The second phase of the east to west expressway will be open to traffic in September, and the third phase of the construction will be under construction. Housing construction will highlight the balancing of supply and demand. The city will devote major efforts to building houses for the low income citizens. There will be 2 million square meters of apartments under construction in 2003.

Concerning environmental construction, Qingdao will take the opportunity of bidding for the China Living Environment Award to beautify the city.

The planning and designing for the Olympic projects will be completed by the end of this year and the Beihai Shipyard will be moved to the new

location when the designing is finished. By the end of April, the renovation project to no. 1 and no. 3 bathing beaches will be completed.

(QDTV__Seven Days)