Meng Fanli, mayor of Qingdao and a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress. [Photo/iqilu.com]

Meng Fanli, mayor of Qingdao, Shandong and a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress, said in an interview that the government support the establishment in Qingdao of the China-SCO regional economic and trade cooperation demonstration zone, which would make a big difference in the efforts of Qingdao and Shandong province to opening their doors wider to the outside world.

"The cooperation of this demonstration zone features logistics, trade expansion, capacity cooperation, cross-border development and zones interaction," said Meng. 

"It balances domestic and oversea cooperation. The domestic pioneer zone covers the whole of Qingdao city with one important core area. As for overseas, it seeks to join hands with other countries' urban economic and trade cooperation zones."

According to Meng, Qingdao is a vital city for the Belt and Road Initiative and enjoys the great advantages of land-sea transport. Qingdao therefore could surely be built to serve as a strategic transport hub of the channel through Eurasia. 

In the SCO demonstration zone, the Qingdao international multi-modal transport center has come into service that integrates railways, highways, ocean shipping and airfreight. Besides, five international train lines have opened including the China-Asia line, China-Europe line, China-Mongolia line, China-South Korea line, and ASEAN line.

In 2018, multimodal containers by way of combined transportation reached 1.15 million. In 2019, we seek to achieve a 10% increase to about 1.3 million.

A container ship docks at a port in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, on Jan 9. [Photo by Yu Fangping/for China Daily]

Meanwhile, multiple logistics industry parks and infrastructures are under rapid construction, mainly comprising of China Logistics E-Commerce Cold-Chain Park, Singapore Fengshu Logistics Park and Shandong Operation Centre of Jiali Logistics. Moreover, Qingdao welcomed the entry of over 50 logistics enterprises that specialized in multi-modal transport, including Sinotrans and China Railway International Multimodal Transport. 

Infrastructure to facilitate trade in the core area is being built-up rapidly, such as the SCO trade and investment expo center. A raft of enterprises focusing on trade amongst the SCO and countries and regions involving in the Belt and Road Initiative has settled including JD cross-border e-commerce and Suning cross-border e-commerce. SCO demonstration zone international business center is under planning. Up to now, 7 countries' chambers of commerce, such as Uzbekistan investment committee, as well as over 20 enterprises have reached preliminary agreements for entry. 

"In terms of manufacturing industry (capacity) cooperation, China and other SCO member states each have their own merits. They enjoy great mutual advantages with respect to market, resources, technology and capital, therefore, they could benefit from cooperation. Eyeing the complementary advantages of their resources and markets, we could actively initiative talks on attracting more processing industries entering Qingdao by means of technology cooperation (technology transfer), capacity cooperation and equity cooperation." Meng said.

The Qingdao-Central Asia train service makes its maiden voyage in 2015. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A SCO demonstration zone financial services center has been founded in the core area with 9 financial institutions settled. It has signed framework agreements for cooperation with 10 banks, the credit limits of which reaches 100 billion yuan, so as to cement the economic and trade cooperation among SCO member states and demonstration zone construction. Additionally, SCO demonstration zone industry funds have been set up totaling 20 billion yuan.

According to Meng, the SCO demonstration zone is a channel for Qingdao city and Shandong province to promote cooperation with SCO member states and their industry parks. It also builds a platform for cooperation in the areas of business logistics, trade and manufacturing.