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.

Artist's rendering of the National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technologies in Qingdao, which covers 20 hectares of land and is to be completed next month. This will be China's unique marine science and research laboratory and is expected to rank seventh among all the world's marine research institutes.

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.

Building a new zone

The purpose of the New Economic Zone on West Jiaozhou Bay is to build an economic zone at the national level that is a door that opens to the upper reaches of the Yellow River, and is a national shipping and aviation hub, a cluster of international, marine-related industries, and a modern, international city.

It wants to be a new pole of the economy that extends to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei to the north, the Yangtzi River delta to the south, and the Yellow River delta to the west. This will make Qingdao a capital of the ocean, and more open and livable. The new economic zone's GDP is expected to reach 500 billion yuan ($78.7 billion), by 2015, and more than 1 trillion yuan, by 2020.

There will also be plans to support the Jiaozhou Bay industrial equipment zone, Dongjiakou heavy industrial and chemical zone, the Qianwan seaside economic zone, and an ecologically smart city.

An additional effort will be made to develop marine engineering equipment, petrochemicals, marine biomedicine, and modern services. All the above efforts will help make the west coast of Jiaozhou Bay the most vibrant part of Qingdao and an international navigation hub and trade center for the Northeast.

This particular economic zone was first delineated in the Development Plan for the Blue Economic Zone of Shandong Peninsular, which was approved by the State Council in January 2011.

It has a planned area of 2,096 square kilometers.

The developers want to introduce newer global industries and technologies and upgrade the industrial chain. A key marine base will be built for biomedicine, marine energy, and deep-sea equipment.

China Daily

Overall plan of the Qingdao 'blue Silicon Valley', an engine behind the city's marine-related industrial development.

(China Daily 10/31/2011 page24)