Changxing Island: A rising tide of growth

By Zhang Jiawei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-10 08:40

Xu Changyuan is nothing if not optimistic - and ambitious. The director of development at Dalian's Changxing Island expects the island's GDP to rise more than 600 percent from 1.12 billion yuan in 2008 to 130 billion yuan by 2020.

He predicts that total foreign investment on the island will reach $30 billion by 2020, when domestic investment will total 300 billion yuan.

He foresees that Changxing's population will also surge from 57,000 in 2005 to 500,000 by the end of 2020.

The island's economy in recent years gives him cause for such soaring projections. For the three years from 2006 to 2008, Changxing's annual GDP growth was 33 percent, Xu said, followed by an 88 percent increase in the first half of this year.

Xu said total fixed asset investment on the island was 11.4 billion yuan in 2008, when local government revenues reached 480 million yuan, both after average annual growth rates of more than 80 percent since 2006. The figures for the first half of 2009 were 76 percent and 173 percent higher respectively compared with the same period a year ago.

Investment in fixed assets totaled 27.47 billion yuan since 2005 with aggregate foreign investment in fixed assets totaling $1.23 billion.

Sixteen new projects are now in operation, with 25 under construction and work set to begin soon on more than 30 others.

Foreign investment reached $530 million by 2008 while domestic investment totaled 3 billion yuan.

Advantages

After the Liaoning provincial government decided to develop the island, work began in November, 2005 when a management office was established.

The country's fifth-largest island and its biggest north of the Yangtze River, 252.5-sq-km Changxing has plentiful land for future development, Xu said.

Its lies just 30 kilometers offshore and access to the Shenyang-Dalian expressway, the Harbin-Dalian railway and high-speed passenger trains to Harbin and Dalian.

With a long coastline and deep water harbors, the island will also be developed into a deepwater port, Xu said.

To form industrial development around the harbor, the island has focused mainly on shipbuilding, petrochemicals, metallurgy, equipment manufacturing and port logistics, Xu said.

Three docks each capable of handling ships up to 70,000 tons started operations in 2007, when a 30-km road across the island was also completed. A 117-km road along the coast will be ready this month. Construction began July 18 on a railway line reaching into the island.

Rebuilding Changxing's older cities is also accelerating, with a new, 620,000-sq-m commercial district under construction.

Farmers' per capita net income on the island reached 10,000 yuan in 2008 with non-agriculture workers averaging 17,200 yuan, Xu said.