Economic focus aims to foster innovation, high-quality growth
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY
City famous for ceramics plans to create new business clusters including modern agriculture and coastal industries
The government of Chaozhou in South China's Guangdong province will be dedicated to building five major industrial clusters in the coming few years. Their aim is to advance the city's industrial foundations and modernize its industrial chains, according to the city's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and Long-Term Vision for 2035.
It will further implement an innovation-driven strategy to help foster industrial clusters of ceramics, modern agriculture, coastal industries, cultural tourism and emergency response industry. Their formulation and development are bound to bring stronger productivity and competitiveness, which are expected to play a key role in promoting the high-quality development of Chaozhou's economy, the local government said.
Chaozhou is known as China's ceramics capital. The city is home to nearly 6,000 companies producing and selling ceramic goods. It leads the nation in the total export volume of household ceramics, ornate ceramics and architectural and sanitary ceramics, and also ranks first globally in the annual sales of both optical communication ceramics and electronic ceramic wafers.
According to the plan, the city's ceramic industrial cluster will be worth 100 billion yuan ($15.48 billion) by 2025. Chaozhou is to have at least 1,000 ceramic companies above designated size－companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan－and more than 100 nationally recognized high-tech companies in the sector by that time.
To realize these goals, the city plans to curb the scale of sectors with high-energy consumption, high pollution and low efficiency, while paying more attention to intelligent, high-value added and innovative development. Measures to promote technological upgrading, build industrial parks, develop new brands, improve product quality and introduce professionals are to be applied.
In addition to ceramics, the city is vigorously developing and reinforcing its developmental advantages in aquaculture, tea, animal husbandry and agricultural and sideline food processing to foster an industrial cluster of modern agriculture.
Chaozhou encourages large agricultural companies to take the lead in the construction of modern agricultural industrial parks, which can benefit local farmers.
In December last year, for example, a production base started construction at the Chaozhou preserved fruits modern agricultural park as a core project.
The park was mainly established by Guangdong Jiabao Group, with a total investment of more than 200 million yuan. It aims to create a full industrial chain integrating planting, processing, research and marketing of the main raw materials of preserved fruits in Chaozhou. They are tangerines, green plums and chayote.
The planting areas of these raw materials have reached 10,000 hectares in the park, including 6,667 hectares of green plums. This year, the total industrial output value of Chaozhou preserved fruits is expected to reach 5 billion yuan. Also, the park will help at least 12,000 local farmers to increase their income by the end of the year.
Chaozhou currently has five provincial-level agricultural parks, including the preserved fruits park, and is supporting the construction of 10 city-level agricultural parks covering tea, aquatic products, livestock, vegetables and fruits.
Other efforts in cultivating a modern agricultural industrial cluster include supporting the development of new business models, such as agriculture plus cultural tourism and the internet.
With rich ocean resources, Chaozhou is on its way to becoming a modern coastal city. The city's harbor is a natural deep-water harbor, only 192 nautical miles (about 356 kilometers) from Hong Kong, and 186 nautical miles from the port city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, China.
The initiative of fostering a coastal industrial cluster has attracted many projects to Chaozhou.
In December last year, a groundbreaking ceremony for the Chaozhou Huaying liquefied natural gas terminal project was held in the city. Located in Chaozhou's Raoping county, the terminal with an annual receiving capacity of 6 million metric tons involves a first-phase investment of 7.4 billion yuan and is expected to start operations in 2023, according to Huaying Natural Gas.
Three gas storage tanks with a capacity of 200,000 cubic meters each will be built alongside the first stage of the Chaozhou project.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, a senior official said the successful construction of this project would "help Chaozhou increase its capacity of ensuring energy security, promote industrial transformation and upgrading, build a coastal industrial cluster and further accelerate the construction of the Chaozhou bay area". The bay area covers seven towns, such as Huanggang and Suocheng, with a planned area totaling 630 square kilometers.
Chaozhou has attracted Datang International Power Generation; China Huaneng Group; Yihai Kerry Arawana Holdings; Guangzhou Port Group and other renowned companies to invest in projects in the bay area. They have initially formed three pillar industries of green energy, modern port logistics and food processing, becoming an important engine to drive the high-quality development of Chaozhou's economy, local officials said.
The city next will focus on the establishment of upstream and downstream enterprises in sectors like petrochemical storage, electric power, port logistics, food and renewable energy to build a complete port industrial chain.
When it comes to the cultural tourism cluster, "Chaozhou has a wealth of cultural heritage resources to tap into", said Huang Jingzhong, vice-president of Hanshan Normal University in the city and an expert of Chaozhou culture.
As a famed cultural city with a long history, Chaozhou has reformed the management mechanism of its ancient town since last year, as well as boosted restoration and protection of cultural relics, strengthened inheritance of the intangible cultural heritage, and promoted integrated development of cultural and tourism resources, according to a city plan for 2020-25.
Moreover, the city has some more ambitious goals. They include the construction of a national cultural relics protection and utilization demonstration area, a national culture ecological protection pilot area and national 5A-rated scenic spots. It also wants to become a world-class cultural tourism destination, according to the local government.
Chaozhou will further optimize its infrastructure facilities, and improve the smart parking fee charging system and platforms of intelligent tourism and transport. The city will also build exhibition halls of intangible cultural heritage items and better utilize local tourism resources like Red tourism, rural tourism and coastal tourism to create new economic pillars.
In Guangdong government's work report issued on Jan 24, it said the province plans to build four provincial-level emergency rescue centers and a national southeast regional emergency rescue center. The latter, covering an area of 33 hectares, will be located in Chaozhou to undertake rescue missions in case of typhoon and derivative disasters in coastal areas of Southeast China.
Chaozhou will take the opportunity to strengthen policy support and construct an industrial park in a bid to develop a cluster of emergency response businesses.
New projects and efforts made in industrial upgrading and transformation have injected new impetus into the economic growth of Chaozhou. In the first half of this year, the city's GDP reached 57.6 billion yuan, an increase of 13.8 percent year-on-year.
The added value of industries above designated size increased by 18.7 percent year-on-year to 13.8 billion yuan, of which 8.16 billion yuan was contributed by eight pillar industries including ceramics, food, plastics and stainless-steel products.
The city's total import and export volume was 10.41 billion yuan in the first six months, up 42.9 percent year-on-year.
Chaozhou has made many efforts in the past few years to improve the business environment and attract foreign investment. They include implementing related laws and regulations, and providing more customized services to investors.
From January to August, Chaozhou approved six new foreign-funded projects with an actual foreign investment of nearly 580 million yuan, ranking first in provincial growth rates.
