China's State Farms Sign Contracts Worth 1.98 Billion Dollars with ASEAN

 ASEAN-CHINA-FARMS - 11/03/2004 20:48 - AFP

BEIJING, Nov 3 (AFP) - Chinese state farms signed contracts worth a total of 16.5 billion yuan (2 billion US dollars) Wednesday at the China-ASEAN Expo in southern China's Nanning city, state media said Wednesday. The contracts were signed with companies from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Xinhua news agency said. Statistics show China has 2,000 state farms, covering an area of 38 million hectares (94 acres) of land. A total of 12.4 million people live on these farms. In 2003, the state farms registered a gross domestic product of 100 billion yuan (12.04 billion dollars), while export volume of the farms reached 13.9 billion yuan (1.67 billion dollars). cs/nj