City's economy up during first half

Nantong city saw robust economic development during the first half of 2019, local officials said.

From January to June, Nantong's GDP totaled 458.01 billion yuan ($64.4 billion), an increase of 6.5 percent year-on-year and ranking 19th in the country.

With the rapid development of its urban economy, the construction of an ecological civilization has been a major focus for the city, where new breakthroughs have been made in ecological restoration and protection around the region of the Yangtze River, in coastal shelter forests and in ecological corridor construction.

In the past three years, Nantong has created 23,780 hectares of new afforestation area, and the green coverage rate in the urban area exceeds 40 percent.

By 2018, the forested area in the city hit about 197,000 hectares and the forest coverage rate reached 24.6 percent. The area of wetland resources reached about 464,000 hectares.

The city has 52 tourist attractions including a number of AAAAA-level scenic spots, the highest ranking for tourist attractions in China. It has four provincial-level tourist resorts, 10 forest parks, nine wetland parks and 83 high-level rural tourist areas.

Nantong is devoted to building a group of forest-themed villages and towns to present its best scenery with local characteristics.

A total of forty-nine forest-themed towns, 201 provincial-level green demonstration villages and city-level forest villages have been built. And the green coverage rate in the rural area exceeded 30 percent as of the end of 2018.

In 2018, Nantong was awarded the honor of national forest city by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, and then the Nantong Five Mountain National Forest Park was approved as the first national-level forest park in the city.

Activities like a tree planting festival, bird appreciation week and wetland day have also become deeply rooted in local people's daily life.

(China Daily 10/16/2019 page12)