The coastal city of Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province is to transfer its economic centre to its western foreshore, according to Mayor Du Shicheng, who is also vice-governor of Shandong.
It intends to turn the area into a new city zone within 10 years.
The city is pinning high hopes on its economic and technological development zone, which is located inside the area.
Qingdao is a famous tourist and industrial city in East China. Early in 1992 the municipal government office building was moved out of its old downtown location to the east, extending the downtown area more than 30 square kilometres. Today the newly exploited eastern part has become Qingdao's most prosperous industrial and commercial section.
Just inside the 1.5-square-kilometre area, there are now more than 100 projects settling there, involving a total of 12 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) investment.
However, the construction of the rich eastern area is presently almost saturated after more than eight years of development, so the municipal government has decided to retransfer its economic hub to the west.
Mayor Du said in order to speed up western development of Qingdao, the city will introduce more industrial projects, especially new and high-tech ones to its development zone in the future.
Within five years the zone is expected to be turned into an international area with Qingdao characteristics, the mayor said. Within 10 years it intends to attract more than 300 new and high-tech projects and more than 50 multinational enterprises.
Local government will also give policy support to the zone, such as managerial freedom in personnel affairs, its economy, foreign trade and construction programming. The preferential policies will encourage Qingdao to catch up with the world easier and faster.
"The transfer will bring many more business opportunities to the development zone," said Jiang Jie, director of the administrative committee of the zone. "We will meet this new upsurge in construction."
Established in October 1984, Qingdao Economic and Technological Development Zone accounts for an area of 220 square kilometres, with a population of 300,000. In the past 16 years the zone has ploughed 15 billion yuan (US$1.81 billion) into building infrastructure.
At present investors from more than 50 countries and regions are involved in businesses there and the number of foreign-funded projects totalled 1,180. The contractual foreign capital is US$2.7 billion, and the actually utilized foreign fund of US$1.7 billion.
Economists say the transfer will not only offer more space for Qingdao, but also more opportunities for both domestic and overseas businesses.
(China Daily 08/06/2001)
