Weihai city, once listed as one of the 100 ideal inhabitable cities in the world, holds a festival on Friday that aims to strengthen the city's image as one for living.

At the press conference, vice governor Ma Shihe said the city put environmental protection as its top priority of development. The city called end of those projects with high level of pollution and managed to achieve a balance between economic development and ecological protection.

The second Weihai international inhabitable festival will be held later in the day. Under the theme, habitation, tourism and co-operation, the festival aims to promote an interactive development between habitation, tourism, economy, trade, culture and sports.

In recent years, the city attracts large sum of investment from North Korea based on the city's inhabitant feature. Among the 5.6 billion US dollars of actual utilized investment, North Korea accounts for 62 per cent and enterprises from North Korea account for 60 per cent of the city’s 5,000 foreign-funded enterprises.

(Chinanews.cn September 16, 2005)