A national deep-sea base being built in Qingdao will provide support for China's manned deep-sea submarine, the Jiaolong, and be a public service site for deep-sea scientific research, ocean resources exploration, and facilities development.

Busy container terminal at Qingdao Port, the world's seventh largest port. It also ranks eighth in container handling capacity, and last year it handled a total of 350 million tons of cargo, an increase of 11 percent, year-on-year.

Qingdao has its sights on being China's "blue Silicon Valley" - an international center for marine science and technology, a national area for marine scientific and technological innovative development, and a power behind the growth of Shandong Peninsula's "Blue Economic Zone".

This is obviously an ambitious goal, so the city needs to be innovative in some key sectors, with greater creativity in marine science and technology, attracting talented people, and improving its industries and institutions.

It wants to make the blue Silicon Valley a cluster of research institutes, technological incubation centers, and offices that promote research findings.

The local government plans to speed up work on building a marine technological innovation area and is throwing its support behind national marine science and technology laboratory and national deep-sea base. It also wants a national biological research and industrial center and national new marine materials base.

It has made an effort to develop a strategic alliance in industrial innovations, with emphasis on marine breeding and instruments and equipment. It hopes to forge them into its national pilot program, so support will be given to technological research and development in emerging marine industries, to increase Qingdao's competitiveness.

It is also planning a service center for trade in marine technologies to help translate theoretical developments into economic profits. It will have favorable policies for risk investment and marketing, to ensure the transition from technological advances to industrial ones.