May 14, 1983

Domestic and foreign investment helps land improvement

Work is being speeded up to improve large areas of farming land in five provinces with the help of $229 million in foreign loans and Chinese finance.

The scheme will enable more valuable crops to be planted with investment being recovered in about four years. The work covers 233,000 hectares across the Huanghe, Huaihe and Haihe rivers in Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces.

Over the next five years, the facilities of existing communities will be improved with more irrigation, wells and channels.

New machine to cultivate tea

China has developed three complete sets of machines to mechanize tea cultivation on different terrains.

The new machines have been tried out in an experimental tea garden in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province over the past three years.

The project is part of the efforts to mechanize traditional handwork, ranging from intertilling, weeding, application of chemical fertilizer, deep-ploughing pruning of tea groves and control of pests and diseases.

(China Daily 05/16/2008 page9)