Ni Yongguang, Director of the Information Center of Yichang Three Gorges Logistics Park, had his hands full on Thursday (July 11), debugging the sixteen subsystems of information service platform and in preparation for the opening of the park. Ni said that once the park is in operation, it will enable to provide full service of information release and matchmaking, e-commerce, freight management, real-time cargo monitoring, origin identification of agricultural products, etc.; then the park will become the largest center of logistic service and information as well as the largest base of logistic storage and cold chain in western area of Hubei Province and eastern area of Chongqing Municipality.

Driven by the construction of the Gezhouba Water Control Project and the Three Gorges Project, the pattern of a mega city of Yichang has been formed basically, supported by diversified pillar industries and the unique agriculture. With rapid and constant growth of GRP in the past 10 years, which reached to over 40 billion USD last year, Yichang ranks the second among the central cities and the fourth among all the cities along the Yangtze River. When it comes to the question of the way of harmonious development of the three industries, the drive of further growth and the effect of radiation and promotion of Yichang as a city in the middle of Chongqing and Wuhan, the focus of Yichang has been put on the development of modern service industry.

On the point, Huang Chuping, a Member of the Standing Committee of Hubei Provincial Committee of the CPC and Secretary of Yichang Municipal Committee of the CPC pointed out that drastic development of modern service industry is the key point in transforming Yichang into regional central city in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and to achieve the goal, the industries of cultural tourism and modern logistics have been planned as two of the six most important industries of Yichang at present stage.

Since the ancient times, Yichang has long been “the entrance to the Three Gorges” and the most important transportation junction between Sichuan Province and Hubei Province. The construction of the Three Gorges Project enabled it to be a logistic transit center of the eastern, central and western parts of China. According to Li Zhonghua, Deputy Director of Yichang Transportation Bureau, the Yangtze transportation is encountering some bottlenecks, the two of which are related to Yichang, namely,transit of the Yangtze freight transportation in the project district and in the section between Yichang and Yueyang City.

Yichang Municipal Committee and Municipal Government are keenly aware of an industrial opportunity for Yichang to build itself into a regional logistics node city based on the regional advantages in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Yichang Municipal Government incorporates the modern logistics industry as an important part of the pillar industry system, thus developing six major projects including logistics channel and multimodal transport, modern logistics park construction, leading enterprises to introduce and nurture, the expanding of the key modern logistics industry, urban joint distribution and modern logistics public information platform construction as the carriers, building top ten logistics parks along the Yangtze River including Zhicheng Port, Yichang Sanxia Airport, and 62 key logistics projects with high standards including the Three Gorges Logistics Park and Yunchi Logistics Park. In the meanwhile, Yichang Municipal Government promotes the industrial development near the the airports, the railway stations and ports along the river. The registered logistics companies amounted to 958 with 60 billion RMB as logistics total revenue and 17.5 billion RMB as logistics value added, with year-on-year growth of 14.4 percent in 2012. By 2016, a integrated service hub pattern based on the Three Gorges will be fully formed in Yichang with multimodal transport including by air, railway, highway and water, services can be provided across the country then.

Yichang boasts about rich natural resources and cultural landscape (such as the Three Gorges, the Three Gorges Water Control Project, Qingjiang and Qu Yuan\'s Hometown and so on), as well as Bachu cultural heritage, thus cultural tourism industry has become the most dynamic emerging industry. Currently, Yichang is building the "upgrade" of the cultural tourism industry: including carefully refining boutique areas; extending the industrial chain to achieve the integration of travel, shopping, entertainment, food, accommodation and transportation, promoting the in-depth integration of culture and tourism and the transformation from natural landscape tour to leisure tour. In 2012, cultural tourism achieved total output value of 34.255 billion RMB and provided services for 26,393,400 tourists at home and abroad throughout the year, with year-on-year growth of 36.7 percent. There are 17.65 million tourists come to Yichang during the first half of 2013. In 2016, the total output value of the cultural tourism is expected to exceed 100 billion RMB.

The accelerating construction of the regional commercial and trade center has become another carrier for the development of modern service industry in Yichang relying on the radiation advantage of the commerce and trade circulation after the completion of the three-dimensional transportation network based on the river, the highway, the air and the railway. A number of large-scale integrated department stores, supermarkets, specialty markets came to Yichang， such as Metro, RT-Mart, Grand Ocean Department Store Group, Macalline, Suning, Gome, Wanda Plaza, making Yichang emerging apparently as the commerce center of commodity trade and distribution in the east area of Chongqing and the west area of Hubei Province. "Taking Yichang International Trade Group as an example, the VIP customers of the group amounted to 120,000, among which 30,000 are outsiders. The commodities of the 70.7 million RMB were sold out on the VIP Appreciation Day in a single store, with 25 percent spent by the consumers from other places." introduced by Wang Yiwu, Deputy Director of Yichang Municipal Bureau of Commerce. In the first half of 2013, the retail sales of social consumer goods amounted to 40.28 billion RMB in Yichang, with an increase of 14.6 percent, he added.

Many financial institutions have also been attracted by Yichang’s great potential of radioactive influence on the surrounding cities and regions. At present, a large number of financial institutions came to start their business in Yichang, including 29 banks, 37 insurance companies, 16 securities companies, 28 small-sum loan companies and over 850 offices of financial institutions, which form the financial service system of banking, securities, insurance and trust with non-banking financial sectors. During “the Twelfth Five-year Plan” period, the increased comprehensive credit volumes contributed by all the financial institutions to Yichang reaches about 50 billion USD; and the value added of financial services was about 1.2 billion USD in 2012. By June 30 of this year, the balance of deposits and loan reached over 37 billion USD and 27 billion USD respectively, with a large percentage of increase.

Service industry gives full play to development of headquarters economy and building economy. Exactly, the regional headquarters of many domestic and foreign well-known enterprises have been introduced into Xiling District in the downtown center, especially the regional headquarters of administration, R&D and marketing of the enterprises of east Chiongqiong and western Hubei. Meanwhile, there have gathered a large number of offices of various companies of banking, insurance and securities around Central Square on the 1st Xiling Road, featured with buildings of financial functions. Besides, a great many exporting companies have settled around Time Square and the commercial building on the riverside has attracted numerous businessmen, as the result of which the building economy of foreign trade district and business center were successively formed. The building economy has practically contributed to the municipal taxation.

Ma Xuming, Mayor of Yichang Municipal People’s Government, introduces that 12 technological incubators have been set up in Yichang and other several ones are in construction, the total area of which will be over one million square meters, including a large number of industrial and engineering technological centers and key technological labs at national and provincial levels as well as several post-doctoral scientific research stations. (The news reported by Wet Jingsong, Hu Zhibin and Dan Zhengyan was originally carried out on the first page, first news of Economic Daily on July 12, 2013)