Dezhou City

I. Facts about Dezhou
Dezhou City (N37°E116°) is one of the prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province , covering 10,341 square kilometers, with 11 counties, 125 towns and more than 8，300 villages under its jurisdiction. The population is more than 5.4 million with 500,000 in the downtown. The Yellow river is winding along the borders, and the city is located on the rich alluvial plain. Dezhou enjoys the temperate continental monsoon climate with 4 distinctive seasons, plenty of sunshine, hotness and rain in the same season. The annual average temperature is 13.1°C and the annual average rainfall is 600 mm.

Dezhou is known as the gate of the capital with convenient transportation in history. Located in the Bohai economic circle, Yellow River Delta and the economic belt of “Beijing-HK railway”, and it is considered to be the joint of north China and east China economic areas.

Dezhou lies in the northwest of Shandong province, to the south is Yellow River, facing Jinan; to the north are Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei; to the west is the coal base of Shanxi; to the east is Shengli oil field. Since the ancient time, Dezhou is the transportation pivot in both north and east China. It is the key area of Beijing and Shandong industrial belt circling Bohai Sea.

II. Administrative Area
Dezhou city consists of De Cheng District, LeLing city Yucheng city and Qihe, Pingyuan, Wuzhuang Xiajin, Ninjing, Qingyun County. It has 11 counties, cities and districts, with a total population of 5.4 million, and an area of 10,341 square kilometers.

III. Natural Sources
Dezhou is rich in natural resources with exploited oil reserve of 200 million tons, natural gas of 1.5 billion cubic meters and coal reserve of 950 million tons.
The total arable land of more than 9.4 million mu are fertile and suitable for cereal crops such as wheat and maize and the economic crops such as cotton, oil plants and gourd. It is one of the important food, cotton, fruit, and vegetable base. The annual average output of crops is 3.2 million tons, cotton 180,000 tons and vegetables 7.3 million tons. It is famous for its straw-feeding cattle with the annual livestock number of more than 2 million. The total meat products weigh over 300 thousand tons.

The water resource is abundant. The annual amount of exploitable underground water is 1.24 billion cubic meters. The Yellow River could provide another 2.5 billion cubic meters. The capacity of Dingzhuang and Dingdong reservoir is 108 million cubic meters with 200 million transferable capacities.

Dezhou has a history of growing fruit for more than 2000 years. There are huge varieties and coverage with high quality. It has more than 300 kinds of fruits such as watermelon, jujube, apple, peach, apricot, Chinese pear-leaved crabapple, persimmon, grape, hawthorn, mulberry and pomegranate. The core-free persimmon of Dezhou has been the royal tribute. The apricot, plum and mulberry of Xiajin, which is famous for its varieties of small fruits, are the main materials for canned food. The pears of Lingxian are popular all over the country.

IV．Infrastructure
Dezhou is the joint of Beijing-Shanhai, Dezhou-Shijiazhuang–Taiyuan, and Jinan-Handan, Beijing-HK railways and Ji’nan-Qingdao, Jinan-Liaocheng, Beijing-Shanhai, Beijing-Fuzhou expressways crisscross here. The Beijing-Shanghai express railway being under construction runs through the city. It takes 1 hr from Dezhou to Jinan, 2 hrs to Tianjing, 3 hrs to Beijing, 4 hrs to Qingdao, and 8 hrs to Shanghai by car.

The main natural gas pipeline in North China goes through Dezhou with a daily supply of 80,000 cubic meters. The second river in china ---Yellow River winds through and provides 2.5 billion cubic meters water. The underground water reserve is 1.5 billion cubic meters. The annual water capacity of main reservoirs is 200 million cubic meters.

Telecom industry develops quickly in Dezhou. The switch board capacity is 1.14 million lines. It has nearly 10 thousand long-distance lines, with more than 900 thousand telephone users (16.7%) and 450 thousand mobile users. There are program-controlled local call nets, wireless paging nets, imitating mobile phone nets, digital mobile phone nets and the public data basic nets and information base for division and exchange nets, digital nets and the multi-medium telecom nets.

Electricity: The capacity of Huaneng power plant is 2,520 thousand Kw, among which the first and second phase projects with 1.2 million kw generating units has been put into operation and the third phase project with 1,320 thousand kw unit is under construction. After its completion, the Dezhou Thermal Power Plant will be the largest power plant in Shandong Province.

V. Economic Development
Dezhou is an important food, cotton, fruit and vegetables production base in North China. The arable land is 8,300 thousand mu (560 thousand hectares). The annual production is 3.5 million tons crop, 150 thousand tons cotton and 6.3 million tons vegetables. Livestock farming and the processing industry are strong.

The main industrial products in Dezhou are yarn, cloth, jean-cloth, garments, machine tools, chemical fertilizer, cement, glass and its products, glass fiber reinforce plastic, xylitol, brake shoe, paper, blanket, silk flower, braised chicken, solar energy shower and output transformer, among which the textile has competitive advantage in Shandong Province.

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