Social, economic development the focus of city's ambitious reform strategy to improve business environment, lifestyles

Weifang, an agricultural and cultural center in East China's Shandong province, strives to become an industrial, culturally famous, dynamic and habitable city, according to local authorities.

To realize these objectives, Weifang attaches great importance to forming a modern industrial system, coordinating rural and urban development, seeking new driving forces for development, strengthening cultural soft power, deepening reforms, improving people's livelihoods, and enhancing social governance.

Strong manufacturing

Weifang started constructing a modern industrial system in 2012. The key projects are a national agricultural open development comprehensive pilot zone, a national high-end chemical engineering industry base, a national virtual reality industry base and the second channel of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway.

In the past five years, Weifang was recognized by the central authorities as a national modern agricultural demonstration zone, an agriculture-business interconnection standardization model city, a national agricultural open development comprehensive pilot zone, a high-end equipment manufacturing base in the region surrounding the Bohai Bay, and a national biosurfactant material industry base.

The services industry contributed 45.9 percent of Weifang's total industrial growth last year, 11.4 percentage points higher than in 2012. The industrial output of high and new technologies accounted for 34.1 percent of total industrial output in the city last year.

Two companies in Weifang are among the top 500 in China, and three are among the top 500 private companies nationwide. Currently, Weifang has 15 companies with income from their main operations above 10 billion yuan ($1.51 billion).

Weifang has prioritized the development of strong industries, according to local officials. Upgrading its industries and seeking new driving forces for the development of new industries are central to Weifang's efforts. The key industries that Weifang is developing are smart manufacturing, high-end equipment manufacturing, auto manufacturing and new-energy automobiles.

To meet businesses' demands, the city government of Weifang provides thoughtful, efficient and professional services.

Weifang built three industrial clusters, each with an output scale above 100 billion yuan, focusing on the electronic information industry, biomedicine and biosurfactant materials. It established three industrial clusters with an output scale above 10 billion yuan each, focusing on intelligent equipment manufacturing, environmental protection and new-energy vehicles.

Precious heritage

As for culture, Weifang is looking to transform its traditional cultural heritage into competitive cultural industries, so as to improve people's livelihoods, and improve the whole city's governance and life quality.

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The city's key cultural projects include the Memorial Hall of Wang Jinmei, commemorating one of the founders of Communist Party of China. The city's public cultural sites and venues are all open to the public for free. Weifang has been earmarked by the Shandong provincial authorities as a pilot city for standardized public cultural services.

Weifang is developing its cultural creative industries and building its cultural industry cluster zone. Exploring its reputation as the World Kite Capital, and a cradle for traditional Chinese painting, Weifang intends to make its traditional culture and heritage a city brand and more widely influential.

Liu Shuguang, Party chief of Weifang, said the famous cultural city brand could effectively improve the city's economic strengths and competitiveness, as well as the society's civilization level.

According to the government's plan, Weifang is expected to become a "famous cultural city" at home and abroad. Cultural industries and cultural tourism will become major industries, the output of which should increase at about 12 percent every year in the coming two years, it said. By 2019, the annual added output value of industries related to culture in the city is expected to hit about 34 billion yuan, and these industries should account for about 4.8 percent of local GDP.

Sustainable vitality

Liu said the dynamic of a city in the first place lies in good governance. The city authorities have completed 784 tasks to reform since 2012. Its financial approach to the management of fiscal funds is the first nationwide. The city's rural contracted land use rights reform, and its authorization and registration of rural homestead land use right and collective construction land use rights, are among the first in the province.

The city is actively building modern agricultural demonstration zones, seeking a combination of agriculture and tourism development. It has launched 18 key agricultural projects with a total investment of 14.58 billion yuan.

"The fundamental issue regarding development is the government's work style. It decides the height, speed and progress of a place's development. The key to modernizing Weifang rests with whether the authorities can provide good governance with a down-to-earth work style, so as to let the people feel the concrete changes in their daily lives," Liu said.

To inspire officials to show their courage in exploring reforms, the authorities have implemented a fault-tolerance and error-correction mechanism to exempt officials from punishment for certain reasons, such as due to their lack of experience.

Weifang's pioneering reforms in supply and marketing cooperatives and headmasters ranking system are copied elsewhere in the country.

To inject vitality to its industries, economy and society, Weifang is advancing the modernization of its agricultural, manufacturing and services sectors, urbanization, science and technology and cultural industries. It is also attracting investment and professionals from outside the city.

Weifang now has trade ties with 207 countries and regions, in particular Japan and the South Korea.

Last year, Weifang's import-export volume ranked No 3 among the 17 cities in Shandong. The number of patents of Weifang ranks No 4 among all the province's cities.

The city has received approval to build the Shandong peninsula national innovation demonstration zone.

Weichai Power's internal combustion engine reliability lab is a national key lab.

The Shengrui Transmission Corporation's 8AT automatic transmission won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award.

Boertek Robot developed in cooperation with Beihang University and its intelligent manufacturing institute, the Institute of Modern Agriculture of Peking University, and the Laser Radar Technology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have operations in Weifang.

Quality life

The city has won many titles awarded by the central authorities: National Civilization City, National Forest City, and National Food Safety Model City, and more.

To make the city more comfortable for its residents, the city government always puts the people first, and pays special attention to make the city's development more sustainable and the city more inhabitable. The people can enjoy better housing, education, healthcare, natural environment and public services.

Thanks to these efforts, Weifang's GDP grew 9.3 percent each year on average over the past five years, reaching 552.27 billion yuan last year. It ranks 32nd among more than 300 cities of prefecture level and above. Last year, the average personal disposable income was 33,609 yuan for urban inhabitants, and 16,098 yuan for rural inhabitants.

In the first half of this year, Weifang's GDP grew at 7.8 percent year-on-year, markedly above the provincial average, reaching 286.4 billion yuan. The top 100 enterprises of Weifang reported 380.9 billion yuan in main operation revenue, up 30.4 percent year-on-year. They paid 26.05 billion in taxes, up 32.7 percent.

Their net profit increased 35.9 percent year-on-year, reaching 16.6 billion yuan.

(China Daily 10/20/2017 page24)