Sculpture of Guanzhong and Guanzhong Memorial Museum

Zibo is the hinge city of connecting Shandong Peninsula and inland cities, and the traffic is very convenient with railway link and the highways crisscross. With an abundant industrial foundation, strong supporting capacity, perfect infrastructure facility and strong industrial development capacity, there are twelve national verified and authorized economic zones, such as Zibo high-tech Industry Development Zone and Qilu Chemical Industry Zone. Especially the recent years, Zibo is evaluated as the national investment environment 50 superior cities, for its in depth implementation of the “Environmental set up the city” strategy and the omni-directional approach to creating a beautiful natural environment and government affairs service fine investment environment.

Ancient Business Street of Zhoucun Village

Zibo has established the international friendship relations with 11 foreign cities, and established the broader and closer economic cooperation relations with more than 160 countries and areas; with a group of the world’s top 500 companies invested here to build factories. In 2008, the city has realized gross import and export value of 5.693 billion US dollars, with export amount to 3.633 billion US dollars and import amount to 2.059 billion US dollars. Annual session of China (Zibo) International Ceramics Fair and China (Zibo) Forum on new materials technology and international scientific and technological achievements and investment fair attract a large number of home and abroad friends’ enthusiastic participation, all of which are grand Fairs for international trade and technology in promoting the economic and social development of Zibo and enhancing the world contact. In 2008, the city completed the GDP of 231.67 billion yuan, an increase of more than 13percent; local fiscal revenue of 11.469 billion yuan, an increase of 17.2 percent; the per-capita disposable income of urban residents rose by 11percent and the per capita net income of rural residents by 13percent above. The annual actually utilized foreign capital 475 million US dollars, increased by 10.5 percent compared to the same period. The total import and export amount to 5.65 billion US dollars, with exports of 3.6 billion US dollars, an increase of 20 percent as compared.

Mata Lake

The new era, Zibo people are striding for the goal of building a well-off and harmonious Zibo.

By Li Jiaxia (Shandong Bureau)