Economy > Regions > Jiangsu

Jiangsu is located in the center of east coast of China and low reach of Yangtze and Huaihe Rivers, facing the Yellow Sea in the east and neighboring with Anhui Province in the west, Shangdong Province in the north, Zhejiang Province and Shanghai in the south. It covers an area of 102.6 thousand square kilometers. Its population exceeds 74.06 million and includes 13 provincial cities as Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Nantong, Lianyungang, Huai'an, Yancheng, Taizhou, Xuzhou and Suqian. Now there are 87 development zones, among which are 12 state-level ones including one free trade zone.

Jiangsu lies in the middle latitude with an annual average temperature of 13 - 16 and annual rainfall of 800 - 1200 mm. The frost-free period is 200 - 240 days. The climate here is temperate and there are four distinct seasons.

Jiangsu is a province dominated with plains, most of the area being below 50 m above sea level. Now hills are concentrated in the north and southwest of the province, accounting for 14.3% of the total area of the province. The Yunu Peak of Mount Yuntai in the suburb of Lianyungang is the highest peak of the province, at an elevation of 625 m above sea level. Jiangsu has a dense network of rivers and canals, with many lakes, known as a "country of waters", with over 2900 rivers of various lengths, nearly 300 lakes and over 1100 water reservoirs. They are total in water area of 17,300 square kilometers, accounting for 16.8% of the total area of the province, and it is the highest proportion in China. Jiangsu is by the Yellow Sea to its east, with a shoreline of 1040 km.

Jiangsu is one of seven major tourist provinces in China. There are historical relics and ancient sites scattering across the Yangtze River. The number of overseas visitors Jiangsu received reached 2.23 million with the value of tourist income of 1.05 billion USD in 2003.

Jiangsu is one of the relatively developed provinces in economy in China. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Jiangsu Province exceeded 1 trillion RMB (1 EURO = 10 RMB) in 2002, setting a record high of 1.24518 trillion RMB. Making the province the second one in China with GDP higher than 1 trillion RMB, with its GDP accounting for 10.7% of the nation's total. The progress of urbanization has accelerated, to a level of 46.8%, with enhanced focusing and radiating functions of central cities. As a whole, the province has attained the goal of well-off society in an all-round way with counties as units. The objective of economic and social development in Jaingsu for a period to come is to "take the lead in accomplishing modernization by and large on the basis of building a well-off society in an all-round way."

Jiangsu is one of the major coastal open provinces of the country. It has formulated an all-round, multi-tiered and wide sphere opening up pattern. In 2003, the provincial foreign trade import and export value amounted to 113.67 billion USD, approached 76% of that of GDP. The accumulated total amount of actual utilized foreign funds is 77.67 billion USD by the end of 2003. There are 143 big projects which total investment is above 100 million USD. In 2003, Jiangsu received foreign investment 15.8 billion USD, ranking the first in the country.

Jiangsu is one of the birthplaces of Chinese traditional industries, which is an important industrial production base of textile, machinery, electronics, petrochemical and building materials. The manufacturing industry has been well developed. The provincial industrial value added keeps in the front of in China for a long time. The value added by four pillar industries, i.e. machinery, electronics, automobile, and chemical has reached 46% of total industrial value added of the whole province. The textile, machine building, medicine and shipbuilding rank the first place in the country, and electronics, petrochemical and light industry rank the second place.

The infrastructure of Jiangsu Province is relatively mature. The transportation and communication industries made great progress. Now the comprehensive transportation system integrated with the highway, railway, river and air transportation has been formulated. The length of the qualified highway is 2003 km. The highway network consisting of 4 horizontal ones, 4 vertical ones and 4 linked together is in constructing. The artery railway including Jinghu, Ningwu and Longhai run through the inside of the province with a total business mileage of 726.8 kilometers; It has Nanjing port as the largest port of the inland waters and Lianyungang as one of the ten large seaports of our country. The eight cities directly under the provincial governmental have airports built, and the Nanjing Lukou International Airport has opened several international air routes. The post service and telecommunication industry of Jiangsu has reached a high level in terms of scale and capacity, equipment level, communication ability and the automation and digitalizing level of the networks. The province has 24.435 million fixed telephone users, 20,385 million mobile telephone users and 4.055 million Internet users.

Jiangsu is one of the relatively developed provinces in economy and technology in China. In recent years, Jiangsu provincial government has planned and implemented "science and technology vitalizing province" ad "first Vitalizing Science and Education", and has been giving more priority to the development of education. Now there are 2839 science and technology R&D institutions in Jiangsu. A total of 323 thousand people is engaged in scientific and technological activities, including 105 thousand scientists and engineers, 88 academicians and engineer academicians of the China Science Academy whose titles represent the highest achievements and honor in the scientific fields of China. There are over 105 colleges and universities in Jiangsu. The number of state-level and provincial-level engineering / technological research centers, provincial-level key laboratories ranks in the front of the country.

Jiangsu will define its developing direction while closely combining its industry restructure, choose the industries which have comparatively significant superior with Jiangsu characteristics, and the projects which are able to play the enterprise potential emphatically support. Jiangsu government specially encourage those industries in which Jiangsu had comparatively significant superiority, including the industries of textile, clothing, light industry, machinery, electron, medicines, etc., to go abroad and develop processing trade, establish research and development centers facing overseas regional markets to trace the advanced technological level of the world. Through those enterprises abroad they can strengthen the economy and trade cooperation with the domestic maternal enterprises and finally form relatively centralized overseas processing trade regions 1 overseas 2 or 3 key regions, while taking those as follows as the focal points: textile raw material, clothes, shoes, machine tools, electric tools, motorcycle and its components, passenger vehicle and track, air conditioner, television set, VCD, DVD, washing machine, toys, medical apparatus instruments and packaging machinery and electric equipment.

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