From Mahnoor Makhdoom
BEIJING: Beijing-based foreign media persons have witnessed the peaceful development of China and observed the China’s capacity to successfully lead the mega development project of Belt and Road initiative, the BRI.
The unique experience to these foreign media persons came when All China Journalist Association arranged a very well organized study trip to three cities of the Liaoning province at an eve when China marks the 40th anniversary of new reforms. Liaoning province lies in the North-east of China .
The Media delegation was taken to three main cities in the province, starting with the manufacturing hub Shenyang where the delegates visited the BMW manufacturing plant. There, the delegates were taken aback by the highly integrated and automated body shop that was 95% automated ,consisting of somewhat 856 impeccably synchronized robots. The highly efficient mechanism of those robots was quiet evident. It had a very environment friendly automated paint system as well and one could assess that working condition for the manual labor was also very well organized.
It currently has about 7000 employees. This plant has greatly contributed to Lioaning’ increasing GDP by producing nearly 450,000 units per year. The delegates were also taken to the Shenyang Area of Pilot Free Trade Zone, where the local leaders explained as to how they were mainly focusing on development of advanced equipment manufacturing industries including intelligent manufacturing and aviation equipment and also high performance medical equipment. The leaders also said that they were also trying to deepen the reform of the financial system ,improve financial ecology and encourage and promote investment and build a financial platform with Shenyang characteristics. Creating an international trade and logistics center and an international regional innovation centre was also amongst many other things that they were consistently working to achieve. The delegates were also shown some exquisite and rare architecture in the city like the magnificent Shenyang Grand Theatre, which is one of the landmark buildings of Shenyang and could cater to a variety of theatrical performances including opera, concerts, ballet and fashion shows.
The delegates were also taken to Lang Lang Piano Plaza where they enjoyed live piano performance by some extremely talented artists in the breathtaking park overlooking the river on one side and huge, modern skyscrapers on the other side.
The foreign journalists were then taken to the city of Yingkou. The delegates were welcomed to the Free Trade Zone and were informed that Yingkou was the fourth largest economy in the province .It aims to build a globally open highland ,reinforce the importance of foreign trade ,two-way investment liberalization and facilitation , and build an overall competiveness and openness to the north-eastold industrial base.The aim to build high end equipment manufacturing base, high-tech industrial base and build an important hub for the international sea-rail combined transport channel was also on the cards. Yingkou is the most important city of the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ .It is also the nearest landing port of Korea and Japan to Europe via the Eurasian continent that makes it clearly holding a lot of importance especially in the 16+1 economic and trade cooperation.
The delegates were finally taken to the International port city of Dalian. They were immediately awestruck by the modern architecture, skyscrapers that hurt your neck. In Dalian Pilot FTZ the visiting media persons came to know that since 2001 Dalian’s economy has been going up. An evidence of that to the effect was that the total amount of import and export for self-support trade was 224.45 billion and it went up by 8 percent year by year. At Dayaowan Free Trade Port Area ,some more intriguing facts such as ; that any ship, irrespective of the size could dock at the harbo,r also surfaced. Foreign investment in this area was encouraged as they had eradicated all the tedious formalities foreigners had to go through while foreign investment procedure has been made very hassle free.
Delegates were also taken to Cisco which is referred to as the silicon valley of Asia. It is the number one security networking company and an intelligent platform for secure networking. It originated from San Francisco back in 1984 and has since flourished into an international multi billionaire company.
The Director Claire Meng, said that the management moved to Dalian for the diversity in the city. Almost all their employees were trilingual ,speakers of mandarin, English and Japanese/Korean. They were instructed to protect their client’s data as well as their employees’ and have won several awards for the best employer. They had an impressive modern and friendly workplace and were tasked to generate the revenue of about $48billion.
In the end, on a very interesting visit KEDE Numerical Control Co. Ltd where we witnessed several mechanical wonders , as a matter of pride for Pakistan we were met by two Pakistani mechanical engineers working in the company. The company has total 6 foreign employees, four Japanese and two Pakistani professionals. The boys graduated university in China and found themselves this job right afterwards due to their hardwork and excellent skills makingthe country proud by securing an impressive job right after graduation despite the insane competition and being a foreigner.
The visit, overall provided the foreign journalists the best opportunities to learn about China’s process of peaceful development and they were deeply satisfied with China’s successful leading role in BRI implementation under Xi Jinping’s leadership.
