Market News of People's Daily
Page 7, June 11, 2007

Staff Reporter Wang Hai

After the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Rim has become a new hotspot of economic growth.
Domestic and overseas super-weight enterprises are heading towards the Bohai Rim region. The State Development and Investment Corporation (SDIC) has completed its investment deployment in the logistics, energy, finance and high-tech industries.

Bohai Rim: A rising economic rim
Although the term of "Bohai Rim Economic Circle" has been mentioned frequently in many places in recent years, it seems that it remains only a concept for a pretty long period of time and has not left a clear and complete impression on people's minds as the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta.
As early as 12 years ago, the country stressed in its 9th Five-Year Plan that the Bohai Rim Comprehensive Economic Circle should be established with Liaodong Peninsula, Shandong Peninsula, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province as the major players. However, Vice-Minister of Commerce Yi Xiaozhun said last month at a seminar on deepening cooperation among the provinces and cities of the Bohai Rim that Bohai Rim was only a regional concept and had not formed the Bohai Rim Economic Circle. The reason was that Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Liaodong Peninsula and Shandong Peninsula each had its own system, they lacked a cooperation mechanism and cooperation in construction of infrastructure facilities and there was no clear-cut division of industries.
At the seminar, officials from the provinces and cities in the region all put forward their ideas on regional integration and common development. Despite the top officials of the region are still in the stage of discussing cooperation and drafting development blueprint, economic volume of the region already cannot be ignored. According to statistics, the combined regional output value of the Bohai Rim region hit 5.5 trillion yuan, accounting for 26% of the country's total.
UN International Trade Center President Patricia Francis said in a recent interview that Northeast Asia and the Bohai Rim region are attracting more and more attentions from China and even the world. Close cooperation of this region will set an example for the world.

Caofeidian: An epitome of the rise of the Bohai Rim region
Caofeidian is located at the west shore of the Bohai Bay and in the southern part of Tangshan city. The place unknown for many years has recently become a hotspot, with frequent visits by State leaders and executives of leading enterprises. It has also become a focal point across the country and all over the world.
On the shoal of Caofeidian, the sea-filling project with hydraulic fill sand goes on and steel frames are erected. According to introduction, the Caofeidian industrial area occupies a land area of 310 square kilometers, the largest industrial area in the world. By the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan period, total investment in this area will hit 200 billion yuan and annual fiscal revenues from the area will reach 20 billion yuan, with its economic scale equivalent to that of Tangshan city.
It is learned that being the largest coal shipping port under construction in China, Caofeidian coal dock is an auxiliary project of the Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway expansion project put forward by the Ministry of Railway. It is designed to satisfy the needs of the railway expansion project in short terms and will become the "third coal transport channel" in mid-terms. It will have 16 berths each with a planned tonnage of 50,000 tons to 100,000 tons and have an annual capability of loading 200 million tons of coal. The transport capacity of the Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway will be increased to 400 million tons before the year 2009, but the planned coal handling capacity of 200 million tons at Caofeidian port cannot meet the needs of the railway expansion project. Therefore, a special coal dock at the nearby Jingtang Port is also under construction and will be able to handle 30 million tons of coal. It is also one of the projects that have SDIC investments.
SDIC has also invested in the Caofeidian-Qian'an Railway that connects the two trunk railway lines of Datong-Qinhuangdao and Beijing-Qinhuangdao in the north and links the railways with the Caofeidian industrial area and the Jingtang Port in the south. It is learned that in less than one year's time, the railway is completed for operation.

Beijiang Powe Plant: A high-level project with latecomer's advantage
A recently rising economic zone has the advantages of latecomers. Tianjin Beijiang Electric Power Plant is a recycled economy pilot project located at the Tianjin Binhai New Area. The project consists of subsidiary projects of seawater desalting, electricity generation, salt making with condensed seawater, land resource saving and waste utilization. The project is designed to have four units of coal-fueled extra supercritical generators each with an installed capacity of 1000MW and the 400,000-ton/day seawater desalting facility. In the first phase, the project will install two units of the 1000MW generators and the 200,000-ton/day seawater desalting facility. Total investment in the first phase hits 12.3 billion yuan, of which 64% comes from SDIC Power Co.
It is learned that different from traditional coal-fueled power plants which are usually major polluters, Beijiang Power Plant is designed to be a project with "zero emission". In addition, traditional power plants are usually also large consumers of water, but Beijiang Power Plant, since it was launched, not only consumes no fresh water, but also supplies desalted water to Tianjin. After the first phase project is put into operation, the project will be able to supply to 65.70 million tons of fresh water to Tianjin city annually. Moreover, the condensed seawater after desalting process can also be used to produce salt, which will increase the salt production of Hangu Salt Farm to 500,000 tons per year, saving 22 square kilometers of land for the salt farm.
SDIC is a central enterprise that invests, in the form of equity participation and controlling shares, in basic industry, pillar industry and new and high-tech industry in accordance with the national economic development strategy and the requirements of industrial policies. Its investment move is also a wind vane of regional development planning of the country. It is learned that up to date, SDIC has invested more than 30 billion yuan in the Bohai Rim Economic Circle region and has completed its framework deployment of energy resource, logistics, finance and high-tech in the Bohai Bay region through investments in the projects of Caofeidian coal dock, Jingtang Port, Longkou Port, Caofeidian-Qian'an Railway, Beijiang Power Plant, Bohai Bank and Tianjin Lishen Lithium Battery Joint Stock Company Ltd.