Developing marine economy has become a highlight of development of East China this year. Many eastern coastal regions like Guangdong, Shanghai, Hainan and Fujian recently accelerated deployment, released planning documents or applied for demonstration areas. Marine economy is expected to embrace huge market potential worth 1 trillion yuan, learnt by a reporter from Economic Information Daily.
As a province advantageous in marine economy with gross ocean product leading in the whole country for 21 consecutive years, Guangdong province officially introduced the 13th Five-year Plan for marine economic development several days ago. According to the plan, by 2020, gross ocean product of the province will exceed 2.2 trillion yuan, representing an annual growth of 8 percent, and it will account for 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of the province. Centering on marine economy, Guangdong province will foster 20 enterprises with size over 10 billion yuan and 10 industrial clusters with size over 50 billion yuan. Added value of ocean strategic emerging industries will grow by above 15 percent each year. The plan proposes to optimize development strategy pattern for coastal regions, improve coordination of coastal economic development and build gold coast of Guangdong province.
Besides Guangdong province, other coastal regions are also accelerating deployment in marine economy. The reporter learnt from Shanghai Municipal Oceanic Bureau that Shanghai is reporting to the country to build itself into a demonstration city of innovative development of national marine economy and demonstration area of national marine economic development, and will work to develop advanced manufacturing industries such as ocean engineering equipment, marine biological medicine and new energy of ocean. According to Bai Tinghui, director of Shanghai Municipal Oceanic Bureau, annual gross ocean product of Shanghai amounts to 731.1 billion yuan, accounting for about 26.6 percent of Shanghai’s GDP. With help of construction of Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the city will build itself into an “oceanic highland” in the future by boosting opening up in fields like design and manufacturing of ships and maritime work, and making international oceanic organizations and headquarters of transnational companies and enterprises located in Shanghai.
Except Pudong New Area of Shanghai, many cities such as Ningbo, Shenzhen and Haikou are included in the second batch of demonstration cities of innovative development of national marine economy, which was unveiled last week, and are expected to gain hundreds of millions of financial funds from the central government. In addition, Hainan province carried out investigation about marine economy last month in order to know well the marine economy of the province. Fujian province released the 13th Five-year Plan for marine economic development in the first half of last year, targeting gross ocean product exceeding 1 trillion yuan with an annual growth of 10 percent by 2020.
Data shows that during the 12th Five-year Plan period, marine economy of China experienced rapid development and gross ocean product climbed by 8.1 percent year on year. By the end of 2015, the gross ocean product recorded 6,466.9 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 9.6 percent of GDP, and the number of marine-related employees was over 350 million. Marine economy has become a new driver of supporting national economic growth and economic structure adjustment. But in comparison with developed countries, China’s marine economy has unreasonable structure, is weak in innovation ability and has low rate of contribution to economic growth. Therefore, there’s larger development potential for marine economy.
According to the national economic and social development plan for 2017 released by the National Development and Reform Commission during the two sessions, in terms of optimizing regional development pattern and advancing leading development of eastern part of China, the country will focus on implementing the 13th Five-year Plan for national marine economic development and facilitate coastal regions like Hainan province to strive to develop marine economy this year. The 13th Five-year Plan for national marine economic development was officially unveiled in May. It is proposed in the plan that during the 13th Five-year Plan period, annual growth of gross ocean product targets at 7 percent and marine economic aggregate will surge significantly when compared with nearly 6.5 trillion yuan in 2015.
“China is a big maritime country in the world owing 18,000-kilometer-long continental coastline and manageable maritime area covering over 3 million square kilometers. Developing marine economy is not only an important engine of driving economic development, increasing employment and improving people’s livelihood, but also a major measure of pushing forward upgrading of industrial structure and quickening transformation of economic development patter.” Wu Qi, an analyst at the commercial bank research center of the research institute of Hengfeng Bank, told the reporter that the 13th Five-year Plan period is a key period for the transformation of China’s marine economic development pattern and marine economy will become a pillar industry of the national economy.
Many experts indicated that coastal regions in East China will be leading in the development of marine economy by virtue of superior location conditions, more abundant economic strength, more open industry structure and stronger technology strength. During the 13th Five-year Plan period, China will set up a batch of modern ocean industrial clusters and new coastal economic zones. To be specific, it will promote construction of national marine economic development pilot zone in Shandong, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian and Tianjin, support Hainan province to make use of its resource advantage to develop special marine economy, establish demonstration area of marine economic development, and give full play to radiation functions of the above-said regions to drive development of coastal areas of the east coast, near-shore islands, exclusive economic zones and continental shelf.
Noticeably, plans of many regions underscored that developing technological and strategic emerging industries is of great significance to drive marine economy, and made corresponding strategic deployment. As for this, Wu remarked that developing marine economy should be based on technology and government should intensify the commercialization of technological innovation and research findings. The government should make important breakthrough in high-tech ocean fields and continuously improve quality and efficiency of marine economic development. It should give key support to development of emerging industries such as large-scale application of sea water desalination, marine organism medicine, and ocean equipment manufacturing, actively develop marine service industry including port logistics, coastal tourism and oceanic information service, and move quicker in forming new business type and model of marine economy.
Translated by Vanessa Chen
Latest comments