Through more than 40 years of construction, Beijing has changed from a consumer-city to a major city with various industries. Beijing ranks second among the top 50 cities in China in terms of comprehensive power, and is the first among the 40 best cities in China in terms of investment environment.

Capital Economy

Beijing, as China's political, cultural and international exchange center, is a dynamic city with a wide range of industries. During the years after China adopted reform and open-up policies and especially in the Ninth Five year period (year 1996-2000), CPC Beijing Committee and Beijing Municipal Government have made adjustments to the city's economic structure and layout to ensure a healthy, sustained economic development for the city.

In 2002 particularly, Beijing government managed to overcome the influence of a slowed down world economy and made active adjustment to the new economic environment after China's entry to WTO. Beijing's gross domestic production (GDP) in 2002 increased 10.4% from the previous year to reach 321.27 billion Yuan (approximately 38.71 billion U.S. dollars).

Beijing is a major city with the greatest development of the tertiary industry with 62.2% of the total GDP devoting to the tertiary industry. Local financial revenue of the city totaled 53.4 billion Yuan (approximately 6.43 billion U.S. dollars) and saw an increase of 25.9 % over 2001 and an average of over 20% increase for a consecutive of eight years. Beijing's local expenditure was 62.83 billion Yuan (approximately 7.57 billion U.S. dollars), which equaled to an increase of 12.4 over the previous year.

Industries

Beijing has a fully integrated industrial structure. It has to date nearly 23,800 industrial enterprises, covering fields of electronics, machinery, chemicals, light industry, textile and car manufacturing. Among all the enterprises, there are 4, 551 state-owned ones, with annual sales of over five million Yuan (nearly 602,409.64 U.S. dollars). High tech and modern manufacturing industries have become the leading forces of Beijing's industrial growth. Total value added of the industrial sector of Beijing achieved 87.47 billion Yuan (approximately 10.54 billion U.S. dollars) in 2002. Gross profit realized and tax collected from medium and large industrial enterprises stood at 59.05 billion Yuan (approximately 7.11 billion U.S. dollars).

Agriculture

In the year of 2002, Beijing saw the establishment of a modern agriculture structure highlighting cash crops and fruit tree plantation, livestock breeding and eco-tourism. Livestock breeding occupies 55% of the gross agricultural output for Beijing in 2002. Cash crops accounted for 45.4% of the total crops.

Post and Telecommunication

Beijing has established postal communications with virtually all countries and areas around the world. Residents in Beijing can reach people in 2,300 cities within China via direct domestic long distance phone calls and reach people in about 260 foreign countries via direct international phone calls.

By the end of 2002, every 100 Beijing residents owned 51.5 fixed telephone lines city-wide and 74.3 local phone lines in downtown areas. Mobile phone subscribers in Beijing reached 9.2 million and every 100 Beijing residents owned 80.9 mobile phones. In addition, new value-added telecommunication services like data communication, multimedia, Internet and mobile phone messages have developed rapidly in 2002.

Finance and Insurance

Beijing is home to China's central bank---People's Bank of China and headquarters of big national financial and insurance institutions. Gross outstanding of deposits of financial institutions in Beijing totaled 1,527.6 billion Yuan (approximately 184.05 billion U.S. dollars) in 2002. Outstanding of loans amounted to 922.5 billion Yuan (approximately 111.14 billion U.S. dollars).

By the end of year 2002, there were 118 representatives of foreign financial institutions and non-operational organizations operating in Beijing, which equals to 50.6% of the total number nationwide.

In addition, eighteen foreign banks have set up their branches in Beijing. Foreign and domestic premium in 2002 totaled 22.68 billion Yuan (approximately 2.73 billion U.S. dollars), scoring a 60.9% increase over the previous year. Insurance density of Beijing was 1,255 Yuan (approximately 151.20 U.S. dollars), which was 7.4 times higher than the average national figure.

Commerce and Catering

Beijing has arranged its commerce layout and developed its service facilities to meet the standards of a modern cosmopolitan city. It features many shopping compounds with comfortable shopping environment. People are now able to enjoy delicacies of any kind of Chinese cuisines and from any parts of the world.

Gross retail sales revenue for Beijing's consumer goods equaled RMB 174.48 billion Yuan (approximately 21.02 billion U.S. dollars) in 2002, which saw an increase of 11.3% over the previous year.