Economy
Kunming has 3 economic advantages over many other cities in southwest China: significant natural resources, a big local consumer market and a mild climate. Kunming's economy was ranked 12th of Chinese cities in 1992. Due to its position at the center of Yunnan, one of China's largest producers of agricultural products, minerals and hydroelectricity, Kunming is the main commercial hub for most of the province's resources.
Kunming's chief industries are copper, lead and zinc production. Its iron and steel industry has been expanded. Salt and phosphate mines around Kunming are some of the largest in China. Yunnan Copper Company Limited, based in Kunming, is one of Yunnan's largest mining corporations. From the late 1970s, Kunming's main industries also came to include food and tobacco processing and the manufacture of construction equipment and machines.
In May 1995, the State Council approved Kunming as an Open City. By the end of 1995, the city had approved 929 overseas-funded enterprises with a total investment of $2.3 billion dollars including $1.1 billion dollars of foreign capital. More than 40 projects each had an investment of more than $9 million dollars.
Kunming is a center of engineering and the manufacture of machine tools, electrical machinery, equipment and automobiles (including heavy goods vehicles). It has a chemical industry, and plastics, cement works and textile factories. Its processing plants, which include tanneries, woodworking and papermaking factories, use local agricultural products. In 1997, Yunnan Tire Co. opened a tire plant in Kunming, with a capacity to produce two million tires per year.
Because of its location in the southwest of China, Kunming missed out on China's rapid economic growth in the 1990s. However, the city has recently received renewed attention, becoming an international commercial hub for South and Southeast Asia. The Kunming economic authorities are participants in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), promoting trade throughout China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. Several railroads and highways have been planned to connect Kunming to areas of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, providing access to seaports.
In 2006, the Chinese government approved a 2912 km oil pipeline to be built from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Sittwe, Myanmar to Kunming. This pipeline will carry African and Middle Eastern petroleum to China, bypassing some oil shipments through the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. The pipeline will cut oil transport time by two weeks. In addition, Kunming is also said to be the site for an oil refinery for the incoming oil.
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