OLYMPICS/ Qing dao
Industry clusters drawing strength from games boon
By Ju Chuanjiang and Shi Xiangjie (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-10 14:00
QINGDAO: Qingdao is known for a multitude of enterprises with famous brand names, but today the coastal city is fast becoming a cluster industry capital.
Famous companies like Haier, HighSense, Tsingtao Beer, Doublestar and Aucma are driving development and attracting foreign investment.
Six large industry clusters - petrochemical, shipbuilding, automobile, household appliance, electronic information and seaport - have conglomerated in the city.
Large development programs include Sinopec's 10 million-ton oil refinery and the Korean-backed Qingdao Lidong Chemical Co.
"Clusterization is our necessary choice if we take the new industrialization approach. Qingdao will construct a cluster-based economy for sustainable development, so as to speed up the growth of the local economy," mayor of Qingdao Xia Geng said.
During the past five years, Qingdao's GDP has grown at more than 15 percent per annum.
Last year, sales from major enterprises hit 300 billion yuan ($39.5 billion), tax reached 20 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) and profits soared to 10 billion yuan ($1.3 billion).
Large enterprises not only play pivotal roles in Qingdao's economy, but also provide more opportunities for the development of their suppliers.
In the industry cluster of household appliances, Haier, Hisense and Aucma spearheaded the development of 800 associated suppliers.
Meanwhile, government funds companies and groups in fields like petrochemicals, shipbuilding and container services to stimulate growth and the ladder-like development peculiar to cluster set ups.
Haier, Hisense, Aucma, Lucent and LG are the leading enterprises in the industry cluster of household appliances and electronic information.
Refined oil, dimethylbenzene, aromatic products and PVC are the core products of the petrochemical industry conglomeration.
Cars, trucks, buses and automobile parts constitute the bulk of the automobile industry's production, while container ships, yachts and parts are manufactured by the shipbuilding industries.
Modern logistics like ocean shipping and container operations, port processing and distribution, and mechanical engineering are the core services bunched together to make up Qingdao's port economy.
Haier has helped create a huge cluster of famous brands - Sanyo, Emerson and Mitsubishi, to name just a few. About 75 suppliers, including 33 well-known foreign enterprises and 24 leading national enterprises, operate in Qingdao thanks to its influence.
Many large enterprises from home and abroad have set up research and development centers in Qingdao, where their best technology is now innovated.
China's textile behemoth the Jasfeel Group exports around 130 million products annually from Qingdao.
Its mind-boggling production capacity has drawn the attention of internationally renowned companies like Itochu, Tomen, Marubeni and Mitsubishi.
Their arrival en masse to work with Jasfeel in the manufacture of clothes has spurred a cluster of famous brands around it.
The China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation is the largest in each field, accounting for 30 percent of total national output.
This shipbuilding giant has planned to invest more than 10 billion yuan in nine large-scale projects in Qingdao, creating a shipbuilding industry cluster that has already attracted more than 1.7 billion yuan ($223 million) of investment from China National Offshore Oil Corp.
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