Foreign investment, online filing playing role in city’s opening-up
The strategy of opening-up to the outside world has been a success for the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province, in its modernization efforts over the past decades, Mayor Meng Fanli said last week.
“It is our unremitting pursuit to build a modernized city,” he said. “We have carried out a number of opening-up policies to promote reform and development in recent years and to create an open economy.”
As the host city of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in June, Qingdao will use the opportunity to “promote reform and opening-up to a new level”, Meng said.
He added that the city will also use the Belt and Road Initiative to optimize its next step in plans for opening-up, increasing its ability to influence surrounding regions and integrating resources.
Eyeing an internationalized industrial structure and market, the city encourages local companies to expand global cooperation on production capacity and increase their share of high-tech product exports, Meng said.
The government also is promoting the concept of globalization in local industrial parks, highlighting market-oriented operations and closer cooperation with advanced overseas counterparts and industry associations.
Qingdao is a world leader in the manufacture of highspeed trains, home appliances and marine engineering equipment, and is home to a number of international names, including Tsingtao Beer, Haier and Hisense.
Last year, the local government issued 57 specific plans and measures to attract investment that can modernize the city’s industrial system. Government officials have visited nearly 8,300 companies, helping them reach more than 600 cooperation agreements worth $9.1 billion in foreign capital.
To echo Premier Li Keqiang’s Government Work Report