Nanhai

Nanhai City is situated in the central part of Guangdong, the north of the Pearl River Delta, joining the urban district of Guangzhou to the east, and across a river of Panyu; it borders on Sanshui and Gaoming cities to the west; neighboring on Shunde in the south, and with Heshan and Xinhui across Xijiang; it converges with Sanshui and Huadu to the north, and connects in an arc the urban districts of Foshan in the center. The area is 1,150.51 square kilometers, with a registered population of 1.102 million at the end of 2001. Nanhai has a long history. 6000 years ago, neolithic Xiqiaoshan culture was nurtured here. In the thirty-third year of the Reign of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty (214 BC) Nanhai Prefecture was set up. In the tenth year of the Reign of Kaihuang of the Sui Dynasty (590 AD), Nanhai County was set up. In 1992, the status of county was rescinded and that of a city was set up in its stead. The Municipality is seated in Guicheng, with jurisdiction over 18 townships and 243 village communities. For thousand years, the people of Nanhai tilled the land laboriously. As early as in the Ming Dynasty, the production mode of "mulberry trees on the dykes of fish ponds" was created, farming went industrialized gradually, and thus bringing about the development of handicraft industry and commerce; at the end of the Qing Dynasty, here appeared the first modern enterprise of national capital, and a big number of outstanding people like Kang Youwei, Zhan Tianyou, Chen Qiyuan, and He Xiangnin. Since the reform and opening, Nanhai has entered into a period of rapid development. In 2001, Nanhai was appraised as the second among the counties in the country in social economic development. The GDP reached 39 billion yuan, an increase of 15.2% as against last year; the value of industrial and agricultural output was 88.2 billion yuan, an increase of 17.9%; the total financial revenue was 7.98 billion, an increase of 18%, of which the local financial revenue was 2.54 billion, an increase of 41%; the total value of export was US$ 1.48 billion, an increase of 6.7%; the total retail sales were 14.2 billion yuan, an increase of 10.1%; net income of farmers per capita was 7142 yuan, the growth rate being 5.6%; the disposable income of the urban inhabitants averaged at 14,376 yuan, a growth of 5.4%. The economic structure has been further optimized: the proportion of the first, secondary and tertiary industries was 6.7 : 49.6 : 43.7. New progress has been made in various fields of the society. Nanhai of today is a fine tourist city in China, the State City of Sanitation, one of the first batch of civilized cities of Guangdong, a trial city of the country in information popularization. And it is striving for building up into a state model city of environmental protection. Infrastructure facilities of all kinds are complete in Nanhai. The highway density reaches 163 km / hundred sq. km; it has Nanhai Port of State Class I for ships to sail to Hong Kong, Macao and other foreign countries; over 1.10 million users of various kinds of telephones; consumption of electricity reached 8.12 billion KWH; running water is popularized in cities and country; pipe gas is used in the central districts. The major tourist resources are: cultural sights like Kang Youwei's old residence, Huang Feihong Martial Art Hall, Chen Qiyuan Memorial Hall, four big tourist holiday areas like Xiqiaoshan Mountain, Nanguo Peach Garden, and Xianhu and Nanhai Film & TV Setting Town of the CCTV. Since putting forth the strategy of "pushing forward modernization with information popularization" in 1995, Nanhai has pressed forward the construction of national economy and of information for social administration, and won remarkable achievements. The infrastructure facilities are improving, realizing the plan for optic cables leading to all the villages, and every household can get on to the network, and the synchronization of the three grades of electronic administrative administration engineering -the municipality,-- the township (district) -village. The information systems like rural administration, family planning, education, public health, statistics, taxation, social security, intellectual property, broadcasting and TV have become trial propagating projects of the Province and the country. The construction of information systems in land, court, public security, power supply also ranks in the front in the Province and the country. Based on the means of information, administrative service center and accounting settlement center of the municipal administrative units have been built up in the form of one station. Through the application of the IT, the traditional trades like textile, hardware, building ceramics, underwear, household appliances have been renovated and elevated. In 2001, the value of the IT industry reached 10.2 billion yuan, the index of information popularization reached 66, far exceeding the reference standard for modernization set down by the Province. area code: 757