MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013 SPECIAL REPORT CHINA DAILY | PAGE 17

ZHANJIANGSPECIAL

By ZHAO HUANXINin Zhanjiang, Guangdongzhaohuanxin@chinadaily.com.cn

An unprecedented recycling experiment is being staged on Donghai Island, where two mega petrochemical and steel projects are expected to achieve minimum emissions by combusting each other’s waste and applying the most stringent standards.

Mayor Wang Zhongbing said Zhanjiang is teaming up with State-owned conglom-erates Sinopec and Baosteel Group to implement inno-vations and ensure that the coastal city’s high-octane growth will not compromise its enviable environment.

Moving to usher in a new era of the circular economy, city planners and engineers are working on a breakthrough that turns the waste and other byproducts from one indus-try into the raw materials and energy for another, said the mayor.

Zhanjiang is about 400 kilometers southwest of the provincial capital Guangzhou. Compared with the prosper-ous Pearl River Delta, Zhanji-ang is outside the delta region and strikingly less developed, ranking only 16th among cit-ies in the province in per capita GDP last year.

/ ough designated as one of China’s 14 coastal cities open to overseas investment as ear-ly as in 1984, Zhanjiang’s per capita GDP was just 69 percent of the country’s average last year, according to local statis-tics bureau sources.

Construction on the two massive harbor projects kicked o2 last month. / ey are expect-ed to help bring GDP growth in the Chinese mainland’s south-ernmost city on par with the national average by 2016, Wang told China Daily.

“Upon the completion of these projects by 2016, resi-dents and tourists will still be able to relish pollution-free seafood on Zhanjiang’s clean beaches under blue skies — this is our goal,” the mayor said.

“I’m confident we can do that.”

/ e two gigantic plants, with a target capacity of 10 million

and 20 million tons respec-tively, are being built only 500 meters apart on Donghai Island, Wang said. / e island is China’s seventh largest and Guangdong’s biggest, stretch-ing across 286 square kilome-ters on the South China Sea.

Among the many ambitious e2 orts is a technique that will use hydrogen extracted from coke oven gas at the steel and iron mill to fuel the pet-rochemical plant, the mayor said.

The two facilities will also share power and gas infra-structure, with steam and water pipe networks and con-tingency plans complement-ing each other, he said.

Because it is a pilot project, “there is no experience and expertise that we can borrow to develop a circular economy based on the integrated devel-opment of petrochemical and steel industries,” Mayor Wang said.

“We hope the pilot project, however challenging it may be, will synchronize with the construction speed of the two giant plants,” he said.

With a “scienti; c develop-ment outlook” emphasizing balance between growth and environment deeply rooted in the mind of city officials, Wang said Zhanjiang is ready to present a snapshot of an “upgraded Chinese economy”.

‘Green manufacturing’“We have to pull out of three

decades of stagnation as soon as possible through bolder reform and intensi; ed open-ing-up, especially through securing and developing large industrial projects,” Wang said.

“But what we pursue is green steel plants and green manufacturing — we need both rapid economic growth and clean water and air.”

/ e coveted steel and petro-chemical deals, plus a paper-making development, are expected to generate an output of 250 billion yuan ($39.1 bil-lion) by 2016, according to the Zhanjiang Development and Reform Bureau.

The city’s GDP last year stood at 190 billion yuan, the bureau sources said.

“So our GDP will be dou-bled around 2016. We won’t lag behind the national level,” he said.

/ e mayor admitted it was an “uphill battle” to lift the city’s annual wealth to the threshold of 500 billion yuan. The combined mega proj-ects need at least 100 billion yuan in investment and have prompted the relocation of 25,000 villagers.

“/ e parties involved in the projects have attached utmost importance to pollution con-trol, using state-of-the-art tech-nology to alleviate pressure on the environment,” he said.

“At the end of the day, we have to deliver on our com-mitments of building up a more beautiful and affluent Zhanjiang, where people lead a happier life in a natural environment that is intact,” he said.

PrioritiesThe imminent task is to

offer affordable housing to affected families and speed up construction so people see tangible results as soon as pos-sible — all while protecting the environment, he said.

/ e mayor said such large industrial hubs in the city will create better jobs for urban residents as well as migrant farmers.

The city government will pump at least 25 million yuan

this year into 50 pilot villages so that they will have “equal public services” in transporta-tion, logistics, education, cul-ture and healthcare, which are now largely available only in the urban areas.

The mayor uses the Inter-net to address complaints and build up consensus.

One month after he took office in January 2012, he publicly raised 20 questions, including why the economic size of the city has been irra-tionally small for years and why there are only two listed companies in Zhanjiang. / e queries were posted online to solicit answers.

He then held chat sessions on several news portals, trying to unravel the snags impeding Zhanjiang’s growth.

“Some headwinds for eco-nomic and social development remain in Zhanjiang,” he said, citing the backward road con-ditions.

“We have to accelerate con-struction of high-speed rail-ways and express highways to link the city with the rest of Guangdong and beyond,” he said, adding that it now takes about a good five hours to drive to Guangzhou.

He also said some govern-ment oC cials were not enter-prising enough, while others dare not face criticism from people.

“As government employees, we should be ready to receive both D owers and thorns from the public.”

Ambition and passionThe mayor said there was

a dearth of knowledge about China’s second-tier cities among foreigners.

/ ey D ock to metropolises like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but there are equally brilliant investment prospects in smaller cities like Zhanjiang.

“We have unrivaled ports, a host of pillar industries and abundant land and sea resources,” the mayor said. “Besides, the city government has ambition for growth and passion to provide better ser-vice to investors.”

The annual throughput of goods at Zhanjiang Port is expected to surpass 300 mil-lion tons in 2016, up from the current 171 million, accord-ing to Zhanjiang Port Group President Zhang Yi.

/ e city is now home to at least 30 large enterprises that are either State-owned or from

top global 500 companies, according to the city’s foreign trade bureau.

To better showcase Zhanji-ang and court potential inves-tors, the mayor embarked on a trip to Australia, New Zea-land and South Korea on July 20.

/ e city has already forged amiable relations with many port cities in the three coun-tries. It has, for instance, twinned with the Australian city Cairns and South Korea’s Pohang.

/ e mayor will visit POSCO, a multinational steel-making company headquartered in Pohang, to understand how a city thrives on its ports and how a clean environment is preserved despite a cluster of heavy industries, the mayor’s oC ce said in a statement.

Yang Fang, who has lived in Zhanjiang for a quarter centu-ry aJ er moving from Dalian, another port city, said every time she leJ Zhanjiang for a few days, she missed the city very much.

“Everywhere in Zhanjiang you can snap a picture and it is picturesque,” Yang said. “In summer, you don’t need air conditioners — this is a place where you can open your win-dows and dream with sooth-ing winds from the sea.”

By ZHANG HAIZHOUin Zhanjiang, Guangdongzhanghaizhou@chinadaily.com.cn

Zhanjiang is not just Huang

Han’s hometown. It is also “the sweetest city” in China to him because the country’s ; rst wafer biscuit was made there.

He is talking about Huawei Wafer Biscuits, a local product of Zhanjiang since 1952.

“The city was once China’s sugar capital,” said Huang, a local resident and now the director of the Zhanjiang Eco-nomic and Information Bureau as he proudly recalled the city’s past glories.

“We used to have Sanxing autos and Banqiu small elec-tronics,” he said. “Zhanjiang’s economic heyday was in the 1980s. It had a very solid indus-trial base.”

But things changed quickly in the 1990s when the central government chose the Pearl River Delta as Guangdong’s growth engine — Zhanjiang was gradually sidelined.

Sanxing no longer exists while Banqiu has lost its lead-ing role in the industry, and sugar production in neighbor-ing Guangxi Zhuang autono-mous region has surpassed Zhanjiang, said Huang.

The city’s annual GDP reached 190 billion yuan ($30.9 billion) in 2012, rank-ing ninth among all 21 cities in Guangdong. Its per capita GDP of 26,810 yuan ranks only the 16th, according to ; gures from the city’s Development and Reform Bureau.

The bureau also pointed out that the city’s proportion of agriculture is 20.3 percent, much higher than the provin-cial average of 5 percent.

Industry contributes now 42.2 percent of the city’s econ-omy, while the service sector generates 37.5 percent of the value.

During the country’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), the Zhanjiang city government is determined to boost industrial development in a bid to revive its past success.

Planner say the key is industry, so the city has chosen steel and iron, pet-rochemicals and paper mak-ing to help fuel growth in the coming years.

It also gives renewed impetus to the maritime economy as the local government makes the most of its 20,000 square kilo-meters of sea and more than 2,000 kilometers of coastline.

Zhanjiang has set a goal of 270 billion yuan in GDP in 2015, with the proportion of industry expected to rise to 47 percent as agriculture drops to 15 percent.

The key to reviving city’s industry, according to Huang, is to attract or nurture leading enterprises.

“Take rice cooker making for example,” Huang said. “Although Zhanjiang produc-es some 60 to 80 million rice cookers a year, we have more than 800 small appliances busi-nesses and none of them has reached an annual output of 500 million yuan.”

Most of the rice cookers

made in Zhanjiang are OEM orders for known brands from other cities, leaving only slen-der profits for producers, he added.

OEM is short for original equipment manufacturing, which sources business from a better-known company and provides products or compo-nents carrying the purchaser’s brand.

Attracting investors, Huang said, is de; nitely a faster way, and that is what the city has been doing in recent years.

The 59-billion-yuan Sino-Kuwaiti petrochemical com-plex and 63.5-billion-yuan iron and steel project for Baosteel are both expected to go into operation in 2015.

As the largest joint project of its kind between China and a foreign country, the petro-chemical complex is designed to process 15 million tons of crude oil and turn out 1 million tons of ethylene annually.

/ e steel complex is designed to produce 10 million tons of high-end steel products each year.

TradeZhanjiang saw its interna-

tional trade rising faster than most other parts of China in 2012, according to statistics from the city’s bureau of for-eign trade and economic coop-eration.

Its total foreign trade volume rose 6.37 percent to $4.68 bil-lion. Exports totaled $2.21 bil-lion, up by 5.4 percent, while imports surged 7.2 percent to $2.47 billion, according to Wang Xiaosui, director of the bureau.

China’s total trade volume, in comparison, grew by 6.2 per-cent in 2012.

HE JUNFA / FOR CHINA DAILY

Storage area for 2 million cubic meters of petroleum at Zhanjiang Port. The city is also boosting its maritime economy.

Reviving the ‘sweet’success of the past

42.2percent

of the city’s economy is industry

6.37percent rise

in foreign trade last year

15million tons

of annual crude oil processing capacity at a new Sino-Kuwaiti

petrochemical complex

‘‘

CITY’S ‘FIVE BS’• Blue: With the level of the fi ne air particulates PM2.5 perennially below 20, Zhanjiang is blessed with clean skies and sound ecology.• Bay: One of the fi nest deep water ports in the world, Zhanjiang Port serves as a shipping outlet for much of Southwest China and o� ers the short-est trade routes to the rest of Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Middle East. With 101 bays of vari-ous size, Zhanjiang aims to become a star ocean city.• Beach: Zhanjiang has a coastline extending more than 2,000 km o� ering countless beaches for holi-day makers and seafood lovers.• Base: The South China Sea Fleet, Chinese Navy’s largest, is headquartered in Zhanjiang.• Brilliant: Zhanjiang’s geographic location, natural resources and its full-fl edged e� orts to develop a marine economy present brilliant business opportunities for investors from around the world.

What we pursue is green steel plants and green manufacturing — we need both rapid economic growth and clean water and air.”WANG ZHONGBINGZHANJIANG MAYOR

Location: South China’s Guangdong province

Size: 13,200 sq km

Population: 7.85 million

Coastline: 2,023.6 km

FACTS

Zhanjiang courting industry,but retains passion for natureGuangdong island home to new ‘circular’ steel and petrochemical facilities

ZOU ZHONGPIN / CHINA DAILY

Liu Xiaohua (second, left), Party chief of Zhanjiang, and Mayor Wang Zhongbing (fi rst, right) together with other o� cials convene the China (Guangdong)-ASEAN Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention held in Zhanjiang in April.