Industries making breakthroughs in tariff-free zone

Zhangjiagang Bonded Zone was founded in October 1992. The bonded zone has developed into an important area for international investment and a distribution center for commodities. The chemical, grain and edible oil, electromechanical and textile industries are the four major industries in the zone.

Within the zone are the world's largest organic silicon-production base and lithium battery-electrolyte production base; Asia's largest comprehensive grain and edible oil processing base; China's largest scrap steel processing production base; an elevator rail-production base; and a polyester yarn production base. The annual sales revenue of 121 enterprises exceeds 100 million yuan ($16.7 million), and that of another 24 enterprises exceed 1 billion yuan.

About 30 of the world's top 500 enterprises have invested in the zone so far.

Last year, the bonded zone was China's largest distribution center of wood, cotton, wool and liquid chemical products.

The bonded zone covers an area of 152 square kilometers, and there are 180,000 permanent residents and 170,000 migrant workers. The bonded zone is close to Zhangjiagang Port, which was built in 1968 beside the Yangtze River. It was one of the first batch of ports the Chinese central government opened up in 1982. The port runs along 80 kilometers of the banks of the Yangtze River and can handle 13 major categories of goods, such as containers, wood, steel, grains and edible oils, chemical products, coal and ore. The port's annual cargo-handling capacity ranks first among all county-level city ports in China.

"The transformation of the zone depends on the development of emerging industries, such as new materials, new equipment and new energy, and breakthroughs in research and development," said Wang Huizhong, deputy director of the zone's administrative committee.

Emerging industries now contribute more than 40 percent of the zone's total industrial production value and account for more than 70 percent of the new investment in industries.

The bonded zone has eight stations for academicians, 10 stations for post-doctoral scholars and 27 stations for postgraduates. Nine academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering participate in the zone's research projects.

The administrative committee has also built nine environmentally friendly industrial chains for the chemical sector. The products of one enterprise are raw materials for another enterprise, and the chemicals are transported through pipelines, rather than trucks, among different factories.

According to the zone's administrative committee, the bonded zone's gross domestic product last year was 5.91 billion yuan, up 5.8 percent year-on-year; its import and export revenue reached $13.72 billion, among which $2.74 billion came from exports, an increase of 10.5 percent year-on-year. From January to August this year, the zone's GDP increased by 3.1 percent year-on-year.

The energy consumption per unit of GDP in the zone has dropped by about 4 percent every year in recent years, and the forest-coverage rate of the zone is 43.6 percent.

Wang said that the zone's key projects in the near future will be developing shale gas, new materials and optical film industries, as well as increasing the imports of automobiles, constructing new urban zones and exploiting the tourism resources of Xiangshan Hill.

(China Daily European Weekly 10/22/2015 page14)