Dalian sharpens competitive edge

Dynamic Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, is becoming Northeast Asia's shipping center as well as an international base for petroleum and chemical industries, electronic information and software, equipment manufacturing and shipbuilding.

Early in 2003, when China started implementing a key strategy to revitalize the old industrial bases in the northeast, namely Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces and parts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the municipal government set up a similar plan for Dalian.

"Dalian's competitiveness and comprehensive economic capacity have boomed in the past five years, under the guidance of a scientific development outlook and with opportunities brought by the strategy," Xia Deren, the city's mayor, told China Daily.

In recent years the city has made great efforts to speed up industrial restructure, balance urban and suburban development and further open up to the outside world.

In 2005, Dalian rose to 12th place from 21st in comprehensive competitiveness among 200 major Chinese cities including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao, a survey released by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

In a separate study sponsored by the National Bureau of Statistics, it ranked sixth of 100 Chinese cities for competitiveness.

In addition, Dalian plays a key role in the provincial strategy to further prosper the coastal areas.

Liaoning has decided to ues five ports - Jinzhou, Yingkou, Changxing Island, Huayuankou and Dandong - as the leading ones in upgrading the coastal economic belt.

Changxing Island and Huayuankou are both in Dalian.

"In the long run, all industrial projects will retreat from the urban areas of Dalian and move to industrial areas," Xia said. "Tertiary industries, especially modern service industries, will be the focus for urban areas."

"The development and construction at Changxing Island has now been listed as a national-level cooperation project between China and Singapore," he said.

To date, 28 industrial projects with a total investment of $1.77 billion have settled in Changxing Island, including 10 foreign-funded ones with an input of $440 million.

Another 37 projects have been introduced to Huayuankou Industrial Park.

The official said the city's vitality has mainly been seen in its rapid economic growth rate, constant increase of economic profit and enormous potential.

Data show the annual GDP growth rate has been in double digits for more than a decade, boosted mainly by industrial structure adjustments and the construction of an international shipping center.

Last year, GDP was 256.9 billion yuan ($35 billion), up 16.5 year on year, while the figure for the first quarter of this year was 55.4 billion yuan, up 16.3 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, industrial restructuring has successfully fostered new industries, contributing new blood to economic profit.

In the January-April period, industrial firms achieved a taxation value of 4.9 billion yuan, up 92.2 percent year on year, with total profits of 2.9 billion yuan, up 580 percent on the same period last year.

In addition, a group of major infrastructure and industrial projects began operations, and last year the city completed a total of 146.9 billion yuan in social fixed-asset investment, up 32.3 percent from 2005.

(China Daily 09/07/2007 page40)