Archive for the 'Binhai' Category

The Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area (TEDA) was established in December 1984 and was one of the first national-level development areas. Twelve years later, national strategy established the Tianjin Binhai New Area as a pilot area for implementing deepening reform.

In 2007, the Binhai New Area had a total output value of RMB236.4 billion, accounting for 47.1% of the total in Tianjin. It attracts investment from home and abroad.

Tianjin held a conference in March this year to discuss ‘emancipating the mind’ and requesting municipal officials to lead the way in developing Tianjin into a first-class developed city.

TEDA has ranked at the top for 10 consecutive years on a list from the Ministry of Commerce for its ‘comprehensive investment environment in China’s State-level economic and technological development zones’.

The Tianjin plan to establish a new economic outlook will include accelerating industrial improvements, enhancing innovation in science and technology, greater development of modern service industries, promoting development of the domestic economy, upgrading the overall service of the city.

In the past 20 years, the area has attracted globally known multinationals that have invested in modern manufacturing facilities, including Motorola from the US, Toyota from Japan and Samsung from South Korea.

In 2007, the total output value of the telecommunications, manufacturing and automotive industries exceeded RMB260 billion, accounting for 80% of the total.

In more recent years, modern service industries have moved into the area — foreign banks, investment companies, and software outsourcing enterprises.

Backing up these hopes and plans is the fact that Tianjin Port is the largest port in north China and handled 30 million tons of cargo in 2007, up 20.2% year-on-year.
In the same year the turnover of the 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of container increased by 19.4% to 7.103 million.

The port’s target is 330 million tons of freight traffic and 8.5 million (TEUs) of containers in 2008.
Sources: China Daily and China Daily

Tianjin has historically been a very industrial city building on its advantage of also being a port.

Tianjin has been able to leverage the foreign direct investment brought through TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area which is, in fact, five separate zones working as one) to develop the city.

There are now over 18,000 foreign invested companies within Tianjin. Tianjin is one of China’s strongest second tier cities, and being within an hour and a half of Beijing (soon to be 27 minutes by bullet train), it is becoming more and more attractive to firms who are looking to move out of Beijing for lower costs of production.

Now the economic development zone is getting towards saturation (and the traffic in Tianjin is horrendous) the new developments are happening in the new Binhai area. This has a planned area of 2,270 km², a coastline of 153 km and a resident population of 1.4 million, Tianjin New Coastal District lies in the center of the Circum-Bohai Region and the eastern seaboard of Tianjin.

Tianjin shows how the future of a economic development zone can be supported by the government with educational institutions: there are now 37 institutions of higher learning at all levels, 159 academy of sciences and research institutes, 7 key state-level labs, 10 key ministry-level labs, 10 state-level research centers for engineering technology, 27 state-level and ministry-level testing centers, and there were over 80,000 college graduates last year and an additional 30,000 graduates of other technical schools.
Sources: All Roads Lead to China