Rapidly urbanized city should boost investment and trade.

Travel time between Loudi city in central Hunan and the provincial capital Changsha will be shortened to 30 minutes when the Changsha-Huaihua section of the Shanghai-Kunming Highspeed Railway starts running in December.

The improved transport link is expected to help Loudi integrate faster into the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city group, which is an important development strategy for Loudi.

The city has achieved significant progress in urbanization thanks to the strategy. Its urbanization rate rose from 30 percent in 2005 to 41 percent in 2013.

Loudi Party Chief Gong Wusheng (right) and Mayor Yi Pengfei (left) inspect the city's urban facilities. 

In recent years, the city won a series of titles including the national model green city, excellent city for tourism in China and national garden city.

As a typical resourcedependent city, Loudi relies on traditional heavy industries like steel, non-ferrous metals and coal mining, which make up half of the city's economy.

 

A traditionally resource-dependent city, Loudi is diversifying its economy to cover sectors such as new energy, new materials, equipment manufacturing, tourism and logistics.

As urbanization has sped up in past years, the city has faced challenges such as insufficient urban infrastructure and low efficiency of industrial operations.

In 2011, the city's authorities proposed plans to transform Loudi into a base for new-energy, new materials and advanced equipment manufacturing, a cultural and ecological tourism center, as well as a regional traffic and logistic hub.

The local government's efforts to nurture new industries have paid off and the city’s economy is on a high-speed growth track. Loudi's gross domestic product hit 100 billion yuan ($16.3 billion) in 2013, with an annual growth rate of more than 10 percent for eight consecutive years.

The city is looking to boost its export-oriented economy and hosted both the fifth Hunan Expo and the ninth Hunan Agriculture Expo in November.

Loudi has hosted the Hunan Agriculture Expo five times. The event serves as a platform for local enterprises that produce agricultural and mining machinery products and electronic ceramics to explore overseas markets.

Products from the event have entered markets in Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia and Thailand, as well as African countries including Zambia, Liberia, and Mauritius.

According to Gong Wusheng, Party chief of the city, the local government needs to further promote the city and its products by introducing more expositions, and work hard to boost investment and trade.

刊发于《中国日报》11月28日