Prepared for the future

While it may not be as ostentatiously business oriented as Shanghai and Guangzhou. Beijing ahs nevertheless benefited from China's emergence as a player in the international business marketplace and is increasingly aggressive in its pursuit of development and expansion of its industrial base.

To this end, and to accommodate the growing numbers of business people and casual travelers, Beijing has seen the addition of impressive convention and exhibition facilities and service-oriented up market hotels, along with a system of super-highways to stitch it all together. At the same time, areas of deteriorated development are being upgraded or replaced and their residents moved into fresh, new housing.

To serve its role as a modern convention and exhibition city, Beijing has several large complexes. The 1959-built, 10 hall National Agricultural Exhibition Center is set within 52 landscaped hectares. It was recently joined by the 170,000-square meter floor area China International exhibition Center, which is located near embassies and luxury hotels northwest of city center, and by the 80,000-square meter Beijing International Convention Center, whose buildings occupy the site of the Asian Games village.

Beijing's people are especially proud to have hosted the 1990 Asian Games, for which many of its fine new sports facilities were constructed, and are welcomed the 30,000 organizers and delegates to the Fourth World Conference on Women, which held in September 1995.