Yantai, a coastal city in East China's Shandong province, hosted a manufacturing promotion conference on Sept 27.

A part of the Yantai investment promotion forum, the event saw a total of 11 advanced manufacturing projects valued 6.29 billion yuan ($ 980 million) signed with some leading companies, including Dongfang Electronics, Jerry Group, Rongchang Pharmaceutical Group and Tencent Cloud.

More than 60 representatives of global companies and experts from research institutes attended the conference.

Wang Zhong, the conference's deputy director, extended a warm welcome to the guests and said that the conference aims to provide a bridge to promote mutual cooperation and lure more investment to the local manufacturing sector.

Based on the fruitful development of its industries, Yantai is speeding up its promotion of manufacturing innovation and updating in 2018.

The city is planning to build manufacturing research institutes and industrial parks, strengthen international cooperation and promote construction of innovative laboratories, international workshops and new universities.

Those projects will help develop Yantai into a competitive manufacturing city and provide a favorable environment for the development of high-tech industries.