City moving at speed toward becoming more prosperous

Qingdao leads the country in many categories of social, urban and economic progress

Qingdao, a port city in East China's Shandong province, is seeing steady progress and positive changes in its journey toward building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects, said Qingdao Mayor Zhao Haozhi at a news conference on Nov 16.

Zhao said that since the 18th of the Communist Party of China National Congress in 2012, Qingdao's GDP has reached over 1 trillion yuan ($156.59 billion), its general public budget revenue has risen to over 100 billion yuan and its population has exceeded 10 million. Its GDP grew by 10.7 percent year-on-year for the first three quarters of this year to 1.03 trillion yuan, 0.9 and 0.8 percentage points higher than that of the whole country and the whole province, respectively.

The endeavors of the Qingdao government in accelerating the shift from traditional drivers of growth to new growth drivers have produced positive results. Qingdao now boasts a growing innovative capacity, is among the nation's top 10 innovative cities, and is home to many national-level laboratories with focuses on marine science and intelligent appliances. It is also home to the world's first high-speed maglev transportation system with a top speed of 600 kilometers per hour, and 4,400 high-tech enterprises.

More than just the birthplace of world-renowned enterprises such as home appliance maker Haier Group and brewery Tsingtao, Qingdao has industrial clusters centering on industries such as automobiles, home appliances, rail transit and equipment, with each manufacturing output value surpassing 100 billion yuan.

COSMOPlat, a first-of-its-kind industrial internet platform developed by Haier, ranks top among China's cross-industry and cross-sector industrial internet platforms. Twenty-six internet platforms to serve certain industries have also been put into operation. A total of 30,000 enterprises are using these platforms.

Xue Qingguo, vice-mayor of the city, said the average annual growth rate of its maritime economy stood at 13.3 percent for the last five years. Marine industries generated 358 billion yuan to the output value in 2020, contributing 27 percent of the province's GDP.

In June, the first batch of salmon cultivated in the open, warm waters of the Yellow Sea was collected from the Shenlan 1, China's first deep-sea fish farm in Qingdao.

Qingdao is also the host of projects such as the East China production base of Sino-German joint venture FAW-Volkswagen and a car manufacturing facility of Beijing-headquartered carmaker BAIC. Orix, a diversified Japanese financial services group, decided to establish its industrial operation headquarters in Qingdao, which will be the first global top 500 headquarters to be located in the city.

The city has also been optimizing its infrastructure. Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport was put into operation and the cargo and container throughput at the Port of Qingdao rank fifth and sixth respectively in the world.

The operating mileage of the subway is expected to be increased from 246 kilometers to 503 km in the near future, according to local officials.

The number of 5G base stations in Qingdao tops Shandong province with 5G networks available in all urban areas in the city, and the coverage of gigabit fiber optic internet exceeds 80 percent.

Over the years, Qingdao has made progress in pollution prevention and control, given that its air quality has historically and comprehensively reached the second-class national standard, its 440 rivers and 49 bays are all managed properly and a number of parks and greenways have been built, the government said.

In addition, the city is leveraging its China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Area and its section of the China (Shandong) Pilot Free Trade Zone to expand its influence and boost opening-up.

To date, it has 80 sister cities around the world and has established trading partnerships with 229 countries and regions.

In a recent ranking by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Qingdao was among the top 10 cities with the best business environment.

Qingdao has also attracted many financial institutions. The amount of private investment funds in the city exceeds 120 billion yuan, half of the provincial total.

"We regard as our goal the people's aspirations to have a better life," Zhao said. "Expenditure on people's well-being accounts for more than 70 percent of our fiscal expenditure every year."

The Qingdao government set up a raft of public service facilities during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). The city provided 249,000 educational opportunities for students, 13,000 beds for hospitals, 21,000 beds for elder care and 3,369 facilities for exercise.

The city also offered help to those having difficulty finding a job or finding decent housing. During the 13th Five-Year Plan, a total of 2.31 million new urban jobs were created. In 2020, the income of urban and rural residents in the city was 2.2 times and 2.4 times that of 2010 respectively. So far, more than 60,000 people in Qingdao have been lifted out of poverty.

yinruowei@chinadaily.com.cn

Leafy and historic Shinan district in Qingdao is experiencing rapid development along with the rest of the port city. LYU JIANJUN/FOR CHINA DAILY

A staff member at Haier, a Qingdao-based company, oversees a production line. AN DIANTANG/FOR CHINA DAILY

The Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao) is home to many centers of research and development. CHINA DAILY