The night view of Xiamen, Fujian province. [Photo/China Daily]

The under-construction Eastern Sports Convention and Exhibition New Town, focused on serving major sports and conventions events, will be another landmark project in Xiamen, officials said.

The new town, designed to cover a total area of 6.6 square kilometers, is to have the Egret Stadium, Phoenix Sports Hall and White Dolphin Swimming Pool, as well as a new center for conventions and exhibitions in its main design.

Wang Huaqi, deputy head of the administrative committee of the new town, said: "With the three sports venues at its core, it will become one of the main venues of the 2023 AFC Asian Cup－which would be the highest-level soccer event held in Fujian province."

The three venues are to be completed in November 2022. With a planned residential population of 92,000, it will become one of the largest sports complexes and incubators of the exhibition industry in Xiamen.

The Egret Stadium, planned to have a total of 60,000 seats, will serve multiple functions such as a professional soccer field and a comprehensive track and field competition venue.

The Phoenix Sports Hall is designed to have 18,000 seats. The White Dolphin Swimming Pool, designed with 5,000 seats, will be able to hold professional swimming and diving competitions.

The new Convention and Exhibition Center is positioned as a large-scale exhibition center serving high-end business conferences worldwide.

The total investment of the Convention and Exhibition Center project reached an estimated 13.5 billion yuan ($2.1 billion), with a total area of 818,000 square meters and a total construction area of 1.06 million sq m.

It is a strategic project for the high-quality development of the convention and exhibition industry in Xiamen and a platform to realize coordinated development across the different islands of the city, officials said.

At present, the construction of the New Town's main body is accelerating. Looking from the air, the three sports complexes have begun to take shape.

At the same time, the new Convention and Exhibition Center, resettlement apartments and the reconstruction project of Eastern Binhai Avenue are on the construction fast lane. Xiamen is among the first batch of Chinese cities to cultivate the exhibition industry. Over the past three decades, Xiamen has accumulated a series of advantages in developing it, such as the superior environment, exhibition facilities, beneficial policies and warmhearted services.

It has won the honorary titles such as being named among China's top 10 exhibition cities and China's top 10 charming conference destinations many times.

According to statistics released by the website of the Xiamen Convention and Exhibition Industry, the city's convention and exhibition industry maintained steady growth in 2019.

In that year, the industry achieved a total revenue of 45.1 billion yuan, up 12 percent year-on-year.

Among them, the exhibition industry achieved 17.5 billion yuan and the conference industry achieved 27.6 billion yuan respectively. The convention and exhibition industry has enhanced the local economy and become a major force to upgrade Xiamen's economic system and realize reform and opening-up policy, officials said.