Libo County

Libo County
County
Chinese transcription(s)
  Chinese 荔波县
  Pinyin Lìbō Xiàn
Libo County

Location of the county

Coordinates: 25°25′N 107°53′E / 25.417°N 107.883°ECoordinates: 25°25′N 107°53′E / 25.417°N 107.883°E
Country China
Province Guizhou
Prefecture Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture
Area
  Total 2,432 km2 (939 sq mi)
Population (2002)
  Total 160,000
  Density 66/km2 (170/sq mi)
Time zone China Standard (UTC+8)
Postal code 558400
Area code(s) 0584
Website http://www.libo.gov.cn/

Libo County (Chinese: 荔波县; pinyin: Lìbō Xiàn) is a county of Guizhou, China. It is under the administration of the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.

Geography

The county is located in the remote southeastern corner of the prefecture, on the border with Guangxi. Two local karst sites, Xiaoqikong (小七孔) and Dongduo (洞多), form part of the multi-site South China Karst UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 2007.[1]

Transportation

The Qiannan/Libo Airport, opened in late 2007, has capacity to receive planes of the Boeing 737 class, and to handle up to 220,000 passengers annually.[2] However, the $57-million facility is rather underutilized so far.[2] According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) statistics, 151 paying passengers flew into or out of the airport in 2009 - which was a 98% drop compared to the previous year (7886 passengers), and placed the airport the last in list of the nation's 166 airports by traffic volume.[3] According to a Los Angeles Times reporter who visited the airport, the facility is served only by twice-a-week flight to the provincial capital, Guiyang.[2]

References

  1. South China Karst
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Plenty of new airports but few passengers in China: A construction spree brings flight service to some unlikely locales, and a hoped-for spurt in air traffic fails to materialize." David Pierson / Los Angeles Time / March 12, 2010
  3. 民航机场业务量 (Civil Airports Operations Volume), at the CAAC site [This is apparently an HTML file, not an Excel file, despite its extension]. The same document, in an image format, and with an English translation, can be found in the 2009 China mainland airport rank thread