Meishan, the youngest city in Southwest China's Sichuan province, is committed to making itself a modern industrial city by 2016, said Li Jing, the city's Party chief.

"As a city adjacent to the provincial capital of Chengdu, building a national-level key industrial base in the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone offers unprecedented opportunity for the development of Meishan's industries," Li said.

As a new city that was just established 12 years ago, Meishan has a weaker industrial foundation than many other cities and inadequate resources to support its industrial growth, said Li, who is a deputy to the National People's Congress.However, she said that in the past decade, Meishan has seen considerable progress in industrial development.

"We can fix the problem by introducing outside resources through attracting large projects to set up here," Li said.

According to the Sichuan statistics bureau, sales revenue from the primary operations of Meishan's industrial enterprises of scale - those with revenue from primary operations that exceeds 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) - climbed 42.4 percent last year to 101.73 billion yuan.

To maintain robust growth momentum, the local government last year invested 2.95 billion yuan to improve the infrastructure of the city's 29 major industrial parks.

"We're striving to build a State-level industrial park to foster large enterprises and groups in Meishan," Li said.

She said that over the next five years, Meishan will focus on developing new energy and new materials industries.

"The rapid development of Meishan's industrial sector will create jobs and raise the incomes of local residents," Li said. She noted that the city's GDP reached 67.5 billion yuan last year, up 15.2 percent year-on-year.

Meishan has also stepped up efforts to attract domestic and foreign investment. According to Li, Meishan last year attracted investment capital of 37.4 billion yuan, ranking second among cities in Sichuan.

"We're striving to attract investment of 50 billion yuan in 2012, particularly from Fortune 500 companies and China's top 100 enterprises."

You may contact the writer at liulu@chinadaily.com.cn.