CGTN: China's northeast region will drive economic revitalization through technological innovation

2023-09-09 00:54:10

Peking, China (ots/PRNewswire) – “We have full confidence in the comprehensive revitalization of the Northeast in the new era,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said during an inspection tour of northeast China in August last year.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi has visited the northeastern region several times and held several symposiums to comprehensively revitalize the region, showing the importance the Chinese president attaches to the area.

The northeastern region, which includes Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, has made great strides in economic revitalization, an achievement Xi praised on Friday during another visit to Heilongjiang province. He also stressed the need to further advance technological innovation, which is crucial to boosting key industries in the region.

Building on the region’s existing industrial foundation, it must carefully promote high-quality development of advanced manufacturing, accelerate the modernization of traditional industries and harness the power of technological innovation, which requires continuous optimization of economic and industrial structure, Xi said.

The region has a number of strategic industries that are of utmost importance to both the national economy and security. It offers great scope for development and has immense potential that actively contributes to the rapid creation of a modern industrial ecosystem.

The increasing share of high-tech industries in the region’s domestic economy is a promising sign for the region’s recovery. In the first half of this year, the value added of high-tech production in Heilongjiang’s industrial sector increased by 18 percent year-on-year, exceeding the national average by 16.3 percentage points. The pharmaceutical industry recorded a 15.7 percent year-on-year increase in value added, while the aerospace and equipment sector recorded a notable increase of 24.2 percent.

This trend means that industrial change is entering a period of accelerated growth, which can produce a variety of new catalysts for progress. Meanwhile, a series of new projects in the three provinces have signaled a positive response to the government’s expansion of market access, echoing Xi’s comments on Friday.

“We should better coordinate trade, investment, transport and platform construction, boldly explore and pioneer aspects such as market access, factor mobility and institutional opening-up,” Xi said.

In Shenyang, capital of Liaoning, over 730 projects worth more than 100 million yuan ($13.6 million) were launched in the first half of the year, up 14.5 percent year-on-year. International and local corporations such as BMW and EVE Energy in particular increased their presence in the industrial city, concentrating on the electric vehicle sector and expanding their investments. The total investment of these companies is tens of billions of yuan.

In Jilin, the construction progress of several “mega projects” focusing on new energy and environmental cleanup is also accelerating. In the period from January to July, the province attracted 233 projects worth more than 1 billion yuan, representing an investment growth of 23.7 percent corresponds.

The region in northeast China is also known as China’s agricultural hub, which Xi said will form the basis for ensuring the country’s food security.

The region needs to place greater emphasis on the development of agricultural technology while promoting technology-oriented, environmentally friendly and quality-oriented agriculture and branded agriculture, he said.

Lishu County, where Xi once visited, was an example of the region’s development of technology-enabled agriculture. In Jilin, a major grain-producing region, traditional tillage has been transformed into a practice that fully preserves the black soil that is central to grain production in the province. In the past three years, the cultivated area under the “Lishu Model” has doubled to 3 million mu (200,000 hectares), which will help Jilin’s agricultural output reach 81.6 billion jin (40 million tons) in 2022 ) reached a record level.

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