(1)外文名称: Taiyuan City
    (2)中文名称: 太原市
    (3)内容:
                        Taiyuan City
    As the capital city of China's Shanxi Province, Taiyuan was formerly known as Jinyang, which was initially built in 497 B.C.
With a history of 2,500 years, Taiyuan has always been an ancient cultural city and commercial metropolis in North China. In 1927, it was transformed into a city. Today, it is a major industrial city in North China, taking a strategic geographical location in the general layout of China's economic structure, which forms a connecting link between the east and west as well as joins the north with the south. It has a total area of 6,988 sq km, with the boundaries totaling 560 km in the full length.  Its urban areas total 170 sq km. In 1995, it had a permanent residential population of 2.8277 million, including an urban residential population of 2.1356 million. Now it has under its jurisdiction three urban districts, five suburban counties and one town.
    Rich Natural Resources: The province of Shanxi has always been known as the "sea of coal," and Taiyuan is right located at the heart of this "sea of coal." The surface area of coal containing earth is measured at 1,282 sq km, accounting for one-fifth of the total area of the city. Of the proven deposits of coal, about 50% are gas coal, bituminous coal, coking coal and lean coal, which are superior types of coal for coking, and 43.6% is meager coal. The resources of metals and other minerals in Taiyuan include iron and bauxite, ferromanganese, copper, lead and zinc. The proven iron deposits in Taiyuan are 666.445 million tons while the known deposits of bauxite are the largest discovered in China. Non-metallic minerals include gypsum, sulfur, nitre and refractory clay.
    Taiyuan is an ancient cultural city with a long history, and a host of cultural and historical sites. The famous Jin Memorial Temple Area in Taiyuan is a major cultural and historical site under State protection. The Hall of Goddess, the Bridge over the Fish Pond and the Hall of Presentation have always been honored as "national treasures." In addition, Taiyuan has a number of other cultural and historical sites that are well-known across the world, including the Longshan Grottoes, which are the only Taoist grottoes in China, the Tianlongshan Buddhist Caves and the Chongshan Temple which has collections of scriptures published in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
    Economic Strengths: Taiyuan is the political, economic, cultural, transportation and information center of Shanxi
Province and is also a central city or base of energy, heavy and chemical industries in China. In July of 1991, it was approved by the State Council as an inland city open to overseas investment. It has established an industrial structure with a full range of sectors comprising the four pillar industries, namely, coal, metallurgy, machinery and chemicals, as well as a series of subsidiary industries, including the power, textiles, the light industry, building materials, precision instruments and meters. The metallurgical industry of Taiyuan turns out more than 5,300 types of products, including competitive products of special steel such as stainless steel, silicon steel and bearing steel. Taiyuan exports large quantities of aluminum ingots annually. The coal industry of Taiyuan has formed a development model in which large State-owned coal mines play a major role and local and township coal mines play a supplementary role. The Taiyuan-based Xishan Minerals Bureau --
China's extra-large State-run enterprise producing superior quality power coal and coking coal -- is becoming the largest modern coking coal production base in China. The power industry of Taiyuan has also developed rapidly. By the year 2000, the total generating capacity of Taiyuan will have reached 2 million kw or more. The chemical industry is capable of turning out 15 of the 17 major categories of chemical products, and has formed a system with a complete range of sectors and a considerable scale. With a history of more than 100 years, the machinery industry mainly manufactures products of metallurgical, lifting and mining machinery equipment, as well as machine tools, electrical equipment and meters and instruments.
    Taiyuan has a total of 2,073 industrial enterprises above the township level, including 107 large- and medium-sized enterprises. The most famous ones include the Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Company, Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Works, Taiyuan Mining Machinery Works and Taiyuan Chemical Industry (Group) Company. These extra-large enterprises all have production of scale and superior equipment and technology. As they are highly extensible and accessory to one another, they are creating material conditions for Sino-foreign joint development of industrial products.
    Transportation and Telecommunications Facilities: Taiyuan has the first-class cargo and passenger railway stations in China. Its trunk railway lines, which are mostly electrified, link the city to more than 20 large- and medium-size cities across China. Taiyuan has direct railway lines leading to Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Xi'an, as well as a number of other big cities. Taiyuan is a major transport hub in North China and is also a base for airlines of China. The city has opened 43 domestic and international air routes, with regular flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and other destinations on a weekly basis. There is a direct air route from Taiyuan to Hong Kong, where travelers can proceed to all parts of the world. Taiyuan has a highway system that radiates from the city proper to all corners. In addition to a major highway running through Shanxi province including Taiyuan from the north to the south, there are eight other highways that also run through Taiyuan and lead to other provinces. It takes only six hours to travel by car from Taiyuan to Beijing via the Tai-Jiu Expressway. Taiyuan ranks among the top Chinese cities of similar sizes in terms of available telecommunications services. The installed capacity of the telephone switchboards in Taiyuan had reached 310,000 lines by the end of 1995. Approximately 20% of the local residents have telephone sets. The mobile phone
Service in the city has been expanded to include 540 signal channels. Taiyuan has already established a modern network of mail transportation, and has introduced multiform post services including domestic and international express mail delivery. The supply of coal, electricity, gas and water has been reliably guaranteed, with 88.4% of the local residents using liquefied petroleum gas. The city has basically met the target of central heating supply.
    Progress in Scientific Technological Development and
Education: Taiyuan, with the approval of the State, has opened a national-level high and new technology industrial development zone with a total area of 20 sq km. A total of 331 enterprises have opened ventures in the zone, which produce more than 400 types of high-tech products. Investors from dozens of countries and regions, including the United States, Japan, Germany, Hong
Kong and Taiwan, have invested in establishing ventures in the zone. Those ventures in the zone all enjoy preferential treatment offered by the State. Along with continued expansion of the scope for foreign investment, Taiyuan has also opened a provincial level economic and technological development zone, which is primarily intended to develop export-oriented industries, commerce and trade, as well as real estate business.
In accordance with different orientations of investment, the development zone has been divided into eight sub-zones for the food-processing industry, pharmaceutical industry, electronic industry, mechanical and electrical equipment industry, light industry, packaging industry, fine chemical industry, farm products and sideline products processing industry and storage. With a powerful force of scientific and technological personnel as well as relatively a developed education sector, Taiyuan has 115 research institutions with a total workforce of 12,900. Universities and colleges in Taiyuan have a full range of specialties. The city has a large number of secondary technical schools while the nine-year compulsory education has been made universal.