About Wulong--Wulong Basic Facts

Profile of Wulong
Basic Facts of Wulong

     Wulong dates back to the second year of Tang Wude (619 AD) and has a history of 1391 years. It is located at the junction of the Wuling Range and Dalou Range, and has been granted the name "Portal of Chongqing and Guizhou, Traffic Fort". It has an area of 2901 square kilometers and administers 26 towns, 187 villages and 400 thousand people. It is a key county included in the national plan for poverty alleviation, a demonstration county of national technological poverty alleviation and a pilot spot of the national rural road construction. Within the county there are many mountains, developed water systems and dense vegetation. It has a dimensional climate and belongs to the humid subtropical monsoon climate zone. The mean temperature of the whole county is 7.4 ℃. The mean precipitation is 1094.4 mm. The average sunshine time is 1068.5 hours. And the frost-free period is 296 days. The area has a wide-east-and-narrow-west terrain, with a high northeast and low southwest. The highest elevation is 2033 meters while the lowest is 160 meters. It has a complex geologic structure, with variable lithologic characters, undulating mountains, overrunning cleughes, crouching karst caves, intersecting underground streams and obvious elevation differences.
     The whole county has 177.3 thousand hectares of forestry lands (the forest cover centage is 42%) and 102.7 thousand hectares of meadow lands. It has 444.7 thousand mu of agricultural lands, in which the wet fields are 120.5 thousand mu and the irrigation area is 159 thousand mu. The county includes over 20 rivers like Wujiang River, Furong River, Muzong River, and Daxi River. The total length is 374 km. The total hydraulic power reserve is 2.4 million kw, in which the developable part is 1.9 million kw and 450 thousand kw has already been developed. The surface potable water is all above Level III.
     The Wujiang River, 319 national road, Yu-Huai Railway and Yu-Xiang highway traverse the whole county and have shortened the distance to the main city of Chongqing to about 1 hour drive and greatly raised the locational advantage in its economic and social development. There are over 20 types of mineral resources like coal, iron, copper and bauxite, etc. The tourism resources include the scenic spots like Xiannv mount, Furong cave, Furong river, Wulong Tiankeng group, Baima mount, geofracture of Longshuixia Canyon and Huangbodu driftage. One national forest park, one national key scenic area, three 4A national scenic areas, one national geopark and one provincial natural preservation area have been built. In 2007, the "Wulong Karst", of which the representatives are Furong cave, Tiansheng Third Bridge, Houping Tiankeng, successfully entered the "World Heritage List". It is the 6th world natural heritage in China and the only one in Chongqing.
     For the agriculture in rural areas, there is good development in fields like graziery, green vegetables, fine Chinese medicine crops, tobacco, mulberries, ramie and aquatic products, which are the main financial sources of the farmers. Right now there are 84 poor villages in the county, 44.9% of the total number. There are 20860 poor families and 67121 poor people, respectively 21% and 20% of the total number of families and population. Among them, there are 7201 absolute poor families and 20116 poor people, respectively 35% and 30% of the total number of poor families and poor population. After the poverty alleviation work in recently years, the rural areas and people's living situations of the whole county have been significantly improved. At present, 100% of the administrative villages and 90% of the villager groups have roads. About 20% of the population has tap water. 93% of the villages have improved rural networks. 95% of the families have TVs. 60% of the families have telephones. 40% of the families have renovated housing. 100% of the Primary-school-age children have entered school, and 90% of the population has participated in new cooperative medical service. In 2009, the net income per capita of the whole county was RMB 3863 and the poverty population rate decreased from 45% to 5.5%.
     By the end of 2009, the male-female ratio of the total population is 111.2: 100, in which the school age children take up 3.1%. The age distribution of the population is: 17% for 0-14 years old, 20% for 14-18 years old, 26% for 18-35 years old, 20% for 35-64 years old, and 17% for 65 and over 65 years old. The disabled population takes up 5.6%. The whole county has 61 public health organizations, in which there are 7 hospitals, 26 health clinics in townships, 1 maternal and child care service center, 26 birth control service stations in townships and 1 health inspection authority.
     With the advancement of the health care level of the whole county and the implementation of the new rural cooperative medical services in recent years, the health level of the common people has achieved further progress and the rate of common diseases like phthisis and rheumatism has declined significantly. The county has 4 autonomous towns for minority nationalities, where lived the minority nationalities like Miao, Tujia and Gelao. The population of the minority nationalities is 13810, taking up 3.3% of the total population. They have already blended in with the Han nationality in linguistic communication and farming technologies. The development of the economy and society of minority nationalities advances synchronously with the whole county.
     Due to historical and national reasons, Wulong has an obvious agriculture-based feature for a long time. It is a typical montanic agricultural county with a week industry and poor finance. Confronted with the backward situation of the county and aggressive development status of the advanced areas, the county committee and government lead the people of the county, aspire to fight for a better position, struggle to catch up and implement the "Enrich the people with tourism, strengthen the county with industry" strategy, accelerate the promotion of supernormal and striding development of the Wulong economy and society and strive to build Wulong into a strong special economy county of the city, national ecological county and international tourism resort at an early date. Therefore, the aim "big progresses every year, big breakthroughs every two years, big advancements every three years, big stridings every six years" has been established. And it's planned to realize the "four ones" target in 2011, i.e. total output value 10 billion RMB; total industrial output 10 billion RMB; local financial revenue 1 billion; and 1 thousand RMB increase for farmer net income per capita based on this year. Also it is planned to achieve 20 billion RMB for total local output value and 30 billion RMB for the total industrial output in 2015.