Chinese President Hu Jintao inspected the southern province of Hainan before attending the annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) opening on Saturday.

The forum, April 11-13, is a platform for high-level interaction between leaders from Asia and the world. Boao has been the permanent venue of the annual regional economic forum since 2001.

Hu, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, discussed reform and development issues with local officials and visited with a public made up of various ethnic groups during the inspection tour that started on Monday.

The island province marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Hainan special economic zone (SEZ) later this month. Hu visited an exhibition marking the anniversary at the provincial museum.

"Over the past two decades, Hainan's economic and social development has made a remarkable progress. The appearance of cities and villages has undergone profound changes. Practice shows the policy of setting up SEZ in Hainan is completely correct," said the president.

Founded in 1988, Hainan is one of the five SEZs established since 1980. The others are Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen, all in southern China.

Hu showed his respect for the island's model workers, farmers, teachers and police who had made great contributions to Hainan's development. "You have done extraordinarily at ordinary positions," Hu told them.

The president also revisited the state-level Yangpu Economic Zone in the northwest of the island. Twelve years before, he had been to the zone.

Hu was very happy to learn that last year Yangpu's economy increased by 60 percent and its import and export value was up by 213 percent.

The president said he hoped Hainan to deepen reform, further implement the Scientific Outlook on Development and play a leading role in reform and opening up.

He later inspected a Sinopec oil refining company in Hainan and visited a 300,000-ton crude oil dock.

Leaving the oil-handling terminal, Hu went to the Yangpu Harbor, which boasted the best natural conditions among all deep water ports of the island. The throughput of the harbor, launched in 1990, reached 4.27 million tons in 2007.

Hu encouraged officials and workers to seize the regional economic cooperation opportunity.

On his inspection tour, the president also went among farmers and into Li ethnic villages, learning their difficulties in farming and medical services.

Hu showed great concerns over the island's environment, stressing Hainan must promote the conservation culture, save energy resources and protect ecosystems.

"The education on environmental protection should be thoroughly conducted and ecological protection measures should be strictly implemented so as to effectively preserve the island's nature-bestowed original ecological wonder," Hu said.

Hu also visited a navy troop in Sanya City and examined their armaments. He also asked local officials to apply a cautious, industrious and clean work style.

(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2008)