A conference aiming to promote industrial updating was held in East China's Shandong province on Feb 20. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A conference aiming to promote industrial updating was held in East China's Shandong province on Feb 20.

"Upgrading industrial structure is a hard fight that we must win," said Liu Jiayi, Shandong's Party secretary.

"We will speed up fostering emerging industries and upgrading traditional sectors, while axing outdated capacity, to improve our economic growth quality and competitiveness."

Shandong plans to build comprehensive trial zone in Jinan, capital of Shandong province, Qingdang city and Yantai , a coastal city of East Shandong province.

Zhang Yongxia, mayor of Yantai, stated at the conference that the city is in a crucial stage of economic development. Top priorities in accelerating this development will be constructing pillar industries and increasing the city’s overall competitiveness.

Zhang also said Yantai plans to set up 10 working groups to promote 192 key projects with an investment of 800 billion yuan ($119.4 billion).

The city will also build certain new industries into major drivers of economic growth, namely information technology, food processing, non-ferrous metals and precious metals, high-end chemical materials, equipment manufacturing, automobiles, and medical and health care.

By 2020, Yantai aims to be a city of advanced manufacturing clusters. By 2022, the added value of its strategic emerging industries will be up to 20 percent of its overall added value.