Qingdao sees steady investment growth in H1
The eastern coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province reported fruitful results in attracting investment and global talents in the first half of the year, local officials said.
Statistics from the Qingdao municipal bureau of commerce showed that from January to June, there were 408 newly established foreign-funded enterprises in the city, with actual utilized foreign capital totaling $2.94 billion, ranking first in the province.
The eastern coastal city of Qingdao [Photo/WeChat account: qdfbwx]
A total of 425 key domestic funded projects were settled in Qingdao during this period, with paid-in investment reaching 95.28 billion yuan ($13.61 billion), up 10.8 percent year-on-year.
In addition, the city signed 218 key projects, each worth more than 500 million yuan, and attracted 92,500 talents.
Qingdao has leveraged "new infrastructure" to improve its industrial level, gather high-quality resources and enhance the competitiveness of the city, local authorities said.
New infrastructure refers to digital facilities such as 5G base stations, big data centers, artificial intelligence and industrial internet that can boost investment, promote industrial and consumption upgrade and nurture new growth drivers.
Qingdao has formulated an action plan for attracting investment from key companies in the new infrastructure sector. In the first half of the year, Qingdao reached out to 666 enterprises and signed 83 key projects with a total investment of 60.1 billion yuan.
China's largest 5G smart grid project was recently put into operation in Qingdao. Over 30 5G base stations, which were jointly developed by the State Grid Qingdao Electric Supply Company, China Telecom Qingdao Branch and Huawei Technologies, have been built to support the smart grid.
The city has also facilitated more cooperation and investment by leveraging national strategies such as the China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization Demonstration Zone for Local Economic and Trade Cooperation, the Qingdao Area of the China (Shandong) Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Belt and Road Initiative.
By the end of June, 17,920 new market entities had registered in the Qingdao area of Shandong FTZ. Among them, 127 are foreign-funded. Qingdao's registered domestic capital and registered foreign capital had also reached 113.5 billion yuan and 4 billion yuan respectively.