XIAMEN: The district of Haicang is to Xiamen what Manhattan is to New York City and Santa Clara to California. It is the star of the port city in Fujian Province, southeast China. Any investor, be they from home or abroad, visits Haicang to decide whether to invest in Xiamen, and almost all senior officials touch base with Haicang during their official inspection trips to Xiamen.
Haicang lies west of Xiamen Island, with the Haicang Bridge spanning 870 meters of the sea to link it with the island. Growing in connectivity and strategic importance, it has a concentration of pharmaceutical, integrated circuits (IC), harbor transport and railway freight industries. Eastward and southward it is connected by sea around the world; westward and northward it links to Europe and Central Asia via the China-Europe freight trains. By virtue of this, it is a major distribution hub for import and export commodities in Xiamen, Fujian and even central and south China. And it hosts the Haicang Bonded Port, which is part of the China (Fujian) Pilot Free Trade Zone. All these are new growth points, achieved in less than two decades, thanks to Xiamen’s trans-island development strategy that has integrated the development of the main island with the growth of its four districts on the mainland. According to the Xiamen Development and Reform Commission, through trans-island development, especially accelerated coordinated industrial development on the main island and outside, Xiamen has transcended its geographical limitation for economic development, creating greater space for industrial transformation and upgrading. The production expansion is accompanied by better industrial structure, quality and profits. The industrial layout is a good way to illustrate the trans-island development. Of Xiamen’s 1,700-square-km area, the main island accounts for only 131 square km. In the past, when people talked about Xiamen, they referred to the two downtown districts on the island.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
