Ancient Shaoxing turns a page in history with clutch of modern industries innovation
NIE Xin
The ancient city of Shaoxing, in neighboring Zhejiang Province, boasts a history of over 2,500 years. Widely known for its beautiful scenery and rich culture and heritage, it is also called the “museum with no walls.”
The city covers 8,279 square kilometers, and about 5.03 million people call it home. Shaoxing is divided into Yuecheng, Keqiao, Shangyu, Zhuji, Shengzhou and Xinchang districts.
Last year, Shaoxing recorded 541.7 billion yuan (US$80 billion) in gross domestic product, increasing 7.1 percent compared with 2017. Its per capita GDP reached US$163,000 in 2018.
The city’s 2018 fiscal income amounted to 81.19 billion yuan, up 15.1 percent, and taking up 1.25 percent of the national amount. Per capita disposable income of urban households reached 59,049 yuan and per capita income for rural residents was 33,097 yuan in 2018, rising 8.5 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively, over the figures for 2017.
As an industrial city, Shaoxing is famous for its textile and mental process industries. The city can leverage its geographical edge as Zhejiang Province is located at an intersection of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, putting Shaoxing in a great position to beef up cooperation with other cities and regions, boosted by the support of the central government’s cross-continental strategy.
The New Transit Railway, as part of the planned Shaoxing suburban rail network, has also developed rapidly. It runs from Qianqing in Keqiao District to Shangyu in Shangyu District, along the Xiaoshan-Ningbo railway. At the end of this September, Qianqing’s third station started operation, extending the line by an additional 20 kilometers.
There are currently 75 listed companies in Shaoxing, 11 of which are among China’s top 500 private enterprises. Moreover, 13 of them are among the top 500 private companies in the manufacturing industry.
Shaoxing is also an important export base under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The export volume in 2018 was 204.6 billion yuan, 10.5 percent higher than the previous year, and accounting for 1.25 percent of the nation’s total amount. By exporting to 217 countries and regions, the city ranked fourth in Zhejiang and eighth in the Yangtze River Delta region.
Located at the center of the Yangtze River Delta region, Shaoxing is regarded as an ideal place to seek opportunities and do business.
The Shaoxing Talent, Culture and Tourism Investment Promotion Conference was held in Hong Kong in May this year. The conference aimed to attract more entrepreneurs from the special administrative region to step up investments in Shaoxing.
According to data released at the conference, among the 75 listed enterprises in Shaoxing, four have gone public in Hong Kong.
“Shaoxing ranks third among all prefecture-level cities in China in terms of the number of listed companies,” said Sheng Yuechun, deputy Party secretary and mayor of Shaoxing.
In fact, the city has been boosting economic ties with many cities.
To date, Shaoxing has 39 key projects (each has an investment of over 1 billion yuan) with a total investment of 90.38 billion yuan, including one 10-billionyuan project, five 5-10 billion-yuan projects and seven 3-5 billion-yuan projects. They are mainly in advanced equipment, electronic information and bio-medicine industries.
The government of Shaoxing also signed cooperation agreements with UNISOC, a top chip designer in China, over integrated circuit industry codevelopment, and the National Eastern Tech Transfer Center over the establishment of the Shaoxing subcenter.
Shaoxing has not only upgraded