The Bo’aoForum for Asia was held in Hainan province recently. As the platinum member, the Qingdao West Coast New Area fully leverages the forum to promote its advantagesin opening up and development, and its excellent investment environment.

    The Qingdao West Coast New Area exchange conference was held in the BFA Hotel on afternoon of 25th March. Over 30 forum members, enterprise management, media representatives were invited to join the conference. The Qingdao west coast new area director Li Fengli introduced economic and social development and business environment of the new area in all aspects, he also invited forum participants to investigateinvestment environment in the new area.

    The Qingdao West Coast New Area was approved to the 9th state-level new area of China in 2014. It’s GDP reached CNY 287.1 billion in 2016, ranked 3rd among all 18 state-level new areas, closely next to Tianjin Binhai new area and the Shanghai Pudong new district.

    The West Coast New Area has strong capacity in projects. In 2016 alone, 483 large and medium-sizedenterprises were added in the area, accounting for 45% of Qingdao. The total number is close to 2,000. The new area has 857 large and medium-sizedindustrial enterprises, its manufacturing industry and service industry output all account for 1/3 of Qingdao. The new area has 5 of Qingdao’s 13 industry gathering zones with output more than CNY 30 billion; the number is No.1 in Qingdao. Output of four industry clusters, including household electric appliance, shipping and marine engineering, auto and rubber, all account for about half of whole Qingdao. Household electric appliance industry base in the new area is the 1st hundred billion industry-gathering zone of Qingdao.

    In the past few years, the area has also introduced 11 renowned universities, including the University of China Academy of Sciences, Fudan University, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the Harbin Institute of Technology. Now Qingdao has 20 universities or campuses. The city has held the East Asia Marine Cooperation Platform Huangdao Forum, the Qingdao International Beer Festival, global big data application research forum, and other major international events,whichgreatly enhanced its influence and reputation. The container and cargo throughput of Qingdao port, which has trade tieswith over 7,000 ports of more than 180 countries and regions, sits No.7 in the world. (Yu Feng) [Li Fengli was interviewed in the exchange conference.]