Pingtan Island or Haitan Island is an island of Fuzhou off the east coast of mainland Asia in Pingtan County, Fujian Province, China, south of the complex estuary of the Min River. It is the largest island in Fujian and the fifth-largest island in China.
History
In June 1955, there was considerable road and military construction around Haitan Island, including roads leading to possible artillery positions on the mainland. These positions might have been used to protect the Haitan Strait, which was thought of as a favorable staging area for amphibious operations against the Matsu Islands. The site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2001, under Haitan Scenic Spots, in the Mixed category.
Geography
Administratively, the island is part of Pingtan County, which includes several smaller islands and part of the nearby mainland. Most of the county's towns, including its seat of government at Tancheng, are on the island. Large areas of the island's coast have undergone land reclamation, along with major building and infrastructure projects. Pingtan is separated from mainland China by the Haitan Strait. Most of the nearby mainland is the county-level city ofFuqing, administered as part of the prefecture-level city of Fuzhou. Pingtan is separated from Taiwan Island by the Taiwan Strait. Following the completion of its bridge to the mainland in 2010, Pingtan may be considered the closest part of the Chinese "mainland" to Taiwan Island. Under current international agreement, the island's southernmost extremity forms the boundary between the East and South China Seas. In the still-unapproved draft of the new edition of the IHO's Limits of Oceans and Seas, the northernmost extremity of the islandforms the boundary between the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, with the South China Sea having its northern boundary moved to the south end of the strait.
Economy
The island relies on tourism and anticipates that foreign investment will spur economic growth. The first major bridge to cross the Haitan Strait was completed in November 2010, connecting the island to Fuqing on the mainland. Spanning 4,976 meters, it cost 1.4 billion RMB to build. An 88.5-km-long Fuzhou-Pingtan Railway, connecting Fuzhou to Pingtan Island, via Changle and a series of bridges, is under construction. The project was approved in November 2012. It was expected that the work would start by the end of the year, and would take about five and a half years. In early 2012, it was announced that a large cloud computing center would be built in Pingtan.
Culture
A museum, the Pingtan Art Museum, is currently under construction in the island. The museum, designed by the Chinese-American firm MAD Studio on an artificial island, is scheduled for completion in 2016.
