The construction of the Gezhou Dam in the 1970s contributed to Yichang’s turning from a small city into a medium city.
21 years ago, the Three Gorges project was launched. “The sun rises at the end of the gorge/A large city stands beside a wide river.” This is a wonderful description of Yichang.
Nowadays, Yichang is developing itself rapidly by taking advantage of the national strategy of building the Yangtze River economic belt, and by proposing to build the Three Gorges Urban Cluster as well. Specially, it has stepped up the efforts to implement industrial aggregation, with the aim of constructing a trillion yuan worth economic corridor and transforming from project-driven development mode to self-reliant one. Once named “a throat of the Three Gorges”, Yichang city has gradually become the “node” that links the upstream and downstream economic area of the Yangtze River.
Industrial aggregation: to build a trillion economic corridor
After a year-long tracking review about phosphate production in many enterprises, the Coca-Cola Company decided to purchase Xingfa Group’s phosphoric acid products for food use as additives. Like Coca-Cola, companies including Nestle, Procter & Gamble (P&G), Dow, and Unilever have already put Xingfa Group into their list of providers a few years before.
In Yichang’s Xiaoting Fine Chemical Industry Park, the fine phosphorus chemical products are being transported to more than 50 countries and regions by the Yangtze River every day.
In 2012, the fine chemical became the first industry with 100 billion yuan assets in Yichang, with its products ranging from industrial use, to food use, to medicinal use and electronic use. In the first half of this year, the gross output value of fine chemical industry reached 81.785 billion yuan, up 12.2%. Recently, Yichang’s Xingfa Group has been listed among China’s top 500 enterprises.
Chemical industry is Yichang’s pillar industry. It has developed by taking advantage of Yichang being one of the national eight phosphate rock areas. But during a long period of time, Yichang’s phosphorous chemical industry has been in a chaos state: “Each household can process the phosphate rock as they like.” “The industry has been developing at a low level and many enterprises were involved but not strong.” Yichang’s Municipal Party Committee of the CPC and the Municipal Government then realized that it was critical and urgent to regulate the industry.
Wang Dazhen, Director of the Municipal Commission of Economy and Information, said, “On the one hand, we implemented rigid measures like restricting the quantity of mining, connecting the mining industry with enterprises and providing mines in a limited quota, in order to push the enterprises to develop towards the advanced level; on the other hand, we guided enterprises, projects, factors of production to gather together along the Yangtze River for an intensive development by relying on the ‘golden waterway’ of the Yangtze River.”
In 2006, the Xingfa Group moved from the remote Xingshan County and built a Fine Chemical Park along the Yangtze River, which soon attracted 8 member enterprises and 3 supporting enterprises to settle down. Thus a phosphorus chemical industry chain has formed. In less than a decade, the aggregation merits appeared among various chemical industrial parks along the Yangtze River, involving phosphorus, silicon, salt and chemical industry. “In the future, the key field to be developed is in the strategically emerging industries like new chemical materials, high-end specialty chemicals, new chemical energy, biochemical engineering, energy conservation and environmental protection.” Wang said. Yichang’s fine chemical has obtained the new opportunity to develop itself through the integration of development elements along the Yangtze River.
Yichang has been planning a bigger “blueprint”: with the Yangtze River as the axis and development zones and industrial parks as the foundation, Yichang is to speed up the development along the river and across the river within about 100 kilometers of the section, for the purpose of gathering projects, realizing intensive use of resources, aggregating industries, and integrating urban-rural development. The goal is to build a modern industrial aggregation area, a town belt along the river and a trillion economic corridor.
Since 2012, Yichang has built “four platforms”, namely, Yichang New District, Yichang High-tech Zone, the Three Gorges New Tourism District, the Three Gorges Hub Port. It has had a layout of the six 100-billion-yuan industries including fine chemical, food and biological medicine, advanced equipment manufacturing, new materials, modern logistics, and cultural tourism. It has vigorously developed electronic information, energy conservation and environmental protection, new energy and other strategic emerging industries. It has also greatly developed finance, technology services and other modern service industry.
Currently, the output value of fine chemical, food and biological medicine has reached 150 billion yuan respectively, and advanced equipment manufacturing topped 100 billion yuan. The output of modern logistics, new materials, and cultural tourism has increased by double digits. In the following years, a 100-billion industry will be added year by year. By the end of July, the number of projects in building along the “Yangtze River Economic Corridor” had been 938, and the actual investment in hand was 121.96 billion yuan, up 10% year-on-year.
“The industrial layout has transformed from the dispersed to the centralized, intensive and agglomerated; the investment promotion has transformed from choosing blindly to choose only enterprises with high added value, large scale, high efficiency and less pollution; the development mode has transformed from small but comprehensive to specialized, socialized and scaled; the resource utilization has transformed from the extensive to comprehensive recycling; the development power has transformed from using resources and reducing taxes to independent innovation...” Huang Chuping, the Standing committee of the Provincial Party Committee of the CPC and Secretary of Yichang’s Municipal Party Committee, interpreted Yichang’s development trend along the Yangtze River by “several transformations”.
Industrial upgrading: innovation stimulates recycling development
The GDP growth of Yichang has been continuing for ten consecutive years. Last year its GDP reached 300 billion yuan, ranking the 2nd among the same level cities in central China and the 4th among the same-level cities along the Yangtze River.
Since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the forest covering area in Yichang’s Three Gorges Reservoir has increased to more than 1 million acres, accounting for 16% of the total area. The forest covering rate in Yichang reservoir area has reached 65.7%. The water and soil loss area has decreased by 9%, and the flowing sand in Yichang’s river has dropped by 80%.
According to Party Secretary Huang, “The transformation from resources-consumption developing mode to innovation-driven has optimized industrial structure and enhanced economic quality.”
He also said that Yichang, while being perseverant in its self-innovation in the new high-tech and strategic emerging industries, has transformed the traditional phosphorous chemical industry through “circular economy” mode and realized “two-wheel driven” industrial upgrading.
In the construction of major projects, Yichang has actively docked the national innovation-driven strategy and the “Internet +” plan, and cultivated new industries in biological medicine, new materials, Beidou navigation, magnetic electronics based on the new development forms of “six 100-billion industries”.
Through independent research and development, the nuclear graphite made by Xincheng Graphite Company has filled in the domestic blank; the Oriental Micro Magnetic has established the first domestic magnetic electronic materials and chip industrialization base; the diamond circle blade technology of Heixuanfeng Company takes the first place in China; the Changji Science and Technology has become the sole company with full range and the largest manufacturer of CNC gear shaper; the 0.2 mm-thin glass production technology of Nanbo Photoelectric has reached the world leading level standard...
New forms bear new growth. Yichang, grasping the “Internet +” plan, will promote the integrated development between the new generation industry of information technology and advanced manufacturing represented by cloud computation, networking, and mass data, and the modern service industry. Now the construction of “cloud production” platform serving 28,000 “micro, small and medium enterprises” has been launched already.
That the development elements gathering along the Yangtze River and in the parks has not only perfected the low-cost transport chain, but also set up a new platform for innovation and creation. The highly growing high-tech industry like micro electron, Jiutian environmental protection is springing up. Jiang Zhengxiong, Director of the Municipal Development and Reform Commission (MDRC) said, “Yichang takes the lead in establishing a relatively completed regional innovation system and in the number of innovation platforms among the provincial prefecture-level cities.” The emerging industry growth in the first half of this year was 9%. The high-tech industry output value took up 19.79% of the whole GDP, up 4.79% year-on-year.
The pillar of traditional chemical industry has also burst out its great vitality in “circulation”. Every year, Yihua Group produces about 6 million tons solid wastes which are used to generate electronics or as cement raw materials. It can earn 600 million yuan by selling wastes. Yichang Nanbo has become the first polysilicon enterprise with full closed-loop production in China through technique and technological innovation. Now, in the industrial gathering development zone of Yichang, a cycling economic development mode of “innovation, recycle and efficiency” has formed. In 2014, the energy consumption of 10 thousand yuan GDP is 5.16%, lower than that of 2013; the industrial water reuse rate reached 95%. (Originally published in China Economic Times (Sept 8, 2015) as its headline. Reporters: Wei Haoxing & Liu Jie)