The Jimei district in Xiamen in east China's Fujian provinces, is expected to raise it urbanization level to 85 percent by the year2020 as the province is now making efforts to speed up development of the western side of the Taiwan Straits.
Urbanization level of the district will rose by 30 percent or so in 11 years and the urban area of Jimei will grow from less than 60 sq km at present to 100 sq km in 2020. In addition, its urban population will expand from current 520,000 to 1 million in the same year, according to a work report by Huang Jinkun, chief of the Jimei district government.
Jimei is located to the northwest of the Xiamen Island. “We released the guidelines to develop Jimei in 2004. The focus of its development includes one core area and four wing areas. We hope as the urbanization level increases, the economy of Jimei will get more prosperous,” said Huang.
The core area refers to Xinglin Bay and its neighboring areas, which are located in the south of Jimei near the downtown.
According to Huang, the area will give priority to developing modern service industries including commerce, tourism, education, research and development, and development of of?ce buildings and residential area.
The four wing areas include the Jimei downtown area, Xinglin area, Guankou area and Houxi area.
The Jimei downtown area is famous for its higher learning institutions. Based on rich historical and cultural heritage, the area will focus on tourism and entertainment as well as commerce, finance and residence.
The Xinglin area will highlight the development of advanced manufacturing industry. It will also develop the service industries such as logistics to support its pillar Industry of manufacturing.
The Guankou area in the west is planned to become an investment destination for machinery industry while the Houxi area in the north is expected to be built into a logistics center based on the newly-built Xiamen No 2 Railway Station.
‘Two wheels’
“Urbanization doesn’t mean constructing a number of highrise buildings. Urban construction needs the support from industrial developments,” said Huang. He compares modern service industry and advanced manufacturing industry to the “two wheels” that drives the Jimei district forward in future.
In terms of modern service industry, the district aims to build an important transportation hub and logistics center in the coastal areas along the Taiwan Straits based on its well-developed transportation facilities. In addition, the district will also build some large supermarkets, stores and of?ce buildings to make it an emerging business center of Xiamen.
Among the seven large projects each with an investment of 3 billion yuan that will start construction in Jimei during the 13th China International Fair for Investment and Trade (CIFIT), four are big shopping malls.
“A large supermarket opened on August 20 in the Jimei district, seeing its revenues reaching 800,000 yuan on the first day, almost three times of the average daily income of its another same-sized chainstore in the Xiamen Island. The example on one hand shows supermarkets have great potential in Jimei and on the other, Jimei doesn’t have enough supermarkets to meet the demand,” said Huang.
In terms of advanced manufacturing industry, the district is now making efforts to build ?ve industry clusters with annual output value exceeding 10 billion yuan each, covering auto making, machinery, electronics, textile and chemistry.
The ?ve industry clusters are the auto industry represented by Xiamen Kinglong Motor Group, machinery industry represented by Xiamen XGMA Machinery Co Ltd, textile and garment industry represented by Ports International Co Ltd, bathroom equipment manufacturing industry represented by Xiamen Lota International Co Ltd and tungsten processing industry represented by CB Carbide Group and Xiamen Honglu Tungsten Molybdenum Industry Co Ltd.
Taiwanese investment
Among the four State-level Taiwanese investment zones in the Chinese mainland, two are located in Jimei.
Based on such a close relationship with Taiwan, the Jimei district will pay greater attention to inviting investment from Taiwan when developing the service and manufacturing industries.
“During the 13th CIFIT to be held on September 8 in Xiamen, Jimei is likely to sign more than 30 agreements with investors worldwide and the total investment is around 12 billion yuan, of which one third will be deals with investors from Taiwan. Besides, two thirds of all the agreements are relating to service industry projects,” said Chen Youyi, director of Jimei Investment Promotion Bureau.
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