East China’s Shandong Province is fully focusing on its advantages to develop the marine economy, by switching gear to new growth drivers. In fact, Shandong faced a marine economy output growth of 1.55 trillion yuan last year, increasing from less than 20 billion yuan in 1991, according to provincial Communist Party Chief Liu Jiayi.
As Xinhua news agency reports, this figure accounts for more than 20% of China’s overall. Currently, Shandong is the only provincial-level area that has three ports with annual throughput exceeding 400 million tonnes.
[smlsubform prepend=”GET THE SAFETY4SEA IN YOUR INBOX!” showname=false emailtxt=”” emailholder=”Enter your email address” showsubmit=true submittxt=”Submit” jsthanks=false thankyou=”Thank you for subscribing to our mailing list”]
Now, it aspires to develop three key tasks: faster creation of world-class ports, creating a fully-fledged modern marine industry system and building sustainable maritime ecology and environment. For this reason, a conglomerate has been established to incorporate three major ports in the Bohai Bay area.
What is more, the Jiaodong Peninsula is now turning into a regional transport hub in northeast Asia, taking significant steps following a cooperation agreement between Shandong and Incheon.
In addition, the change in the economy has gained momentum, as Shandong received the green light to build China’s first comprehensive pilot zone of transition from old to new growth drivers at the start of 2018. The province promised to lead to breakthroughs in the span of five years.
Under Shandong’s plan, the modern marine economy will be one of its top 10 competitive industrial clusters, thus prioritizing industries like as new-generation information technologies, high-end equipment and new energy and materials.
Finally, the additional value of Shandong’s modern marine industries could surpass 2.3 trillion yuan in 2022 or more than 23% of the provincial GDP.
