Former powerhouse shines once more

"For the upcoming 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), our goal is to build a first-class enterprise with global competitiveness," said Si Zefu, chairman of the company and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. "We will also continue to focus on high-quality development."

Jilin and Liaoning also play an important role in the northeast's revitalization strategy. Apart from economic growth, the provinces have made much headway in innovative technology, global collaboration, rural revitalization, ecological protection and improving livelihoods in the past year.

On March 27, construction of the new energy intelligent network vehicle innovation test center for automaker FAW Group started in Changchun, the capital of Jilin.

With an investment of 2.69 billion yuan ($378.8 million), the project is located in Changchun International Automobile City, which covers 471 square kilometers.

The automobile city is Changchun's blueprint to seek high-quality and innovative growth, focusing on auto parts manufacturing, services, and research and development, authorities said during a news conference on March 19. "The automobile city is expected to achieve total output value of more than 800 billion yuan by the end of 2025," Wang Lu, deputy mayor of Changchun, told at the news conference.

Wang outlined plans to build four highquality development sectors, including various clusters of advanced manufacturing, strategic emerging industries and modern service industries.

"The plan for the four sectors aims to promote industrial diversification and upgrading," Wang said. "After completion, the proportion of strategic emerging industries and the modern service industry in Changchun will be greatly increased."

In Liaoning, the city operation management center of Dalian Jinpu New Area, which is under construction, is expected to have a trial run next month. "It will be the first digital 'city brain' in Northeast China," said Li Pengyu, director of the administrative committee in the Dalian Jinpu New Area, China's 10th State-level new area. State-level new areas are functional zones approved by the State Council to undertake major national development and strategic tasks of reform and opening-up. These include Pudong New Area in Shanghai and Binhai New Area in Tianjin.

The "city brain", which integrates urban big data operation, urban planning, integrated management, emergency coordination and command, will help enhance the area's soft power.

The coastal city of Dalian is speeding up the building of the digital city, making efforts to build the digital economy into a new engine for high-quality economic and social development. On March 5, the city's "Digital Dalian" construction leading group held a meeting and proposed improving the level of digital governance, and making it an important support to promote modernization of the urban governance system.

Zhang Zhanbin, a professor from the Chinese Academy of Governance, said that epidemic prevention and control is a test of the governance system and capacity, and especially a test of digital government construction. He made the remarks during an online symposium about the rejuvenation of Northeast China in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic on April 10.

Zhang suggested the provincial governments of Northeast China should vigorously promote the development of digital governance to improve efficiency, and continue to optimize the business environment with extraordinary measures, so as to lay a good foundation for the better distribution of major productive forces and the landing of major industrial projects.

In Liaoning's capital, Shenyang, a new plant for BMW Brilliance Automotive started construction on April 1 in Tiexi district.

As a major foreign investment project, the new plant is BMW Brilliance's largest construction project and is expected to bring in thousands of jobs in the next three to five years. Business leaders and experts agree that the smooth progress of the project depends on the continuous improvement of the local business environment.

Johann Wieland, president and CEO of BMW Brilliance Automotive, said that the construction of the new plant started on schedule under such a challenging situation, and this fully demonstrated BMW Brilliance's firm confidence in the Chinese market and its investment projects in Shenyang.

Liaoning has made striking changes in terms of improving its business environment and has created a good momentum of rising investment.

A slew of project procurements last year proved it is going in the right direction: In January, Liaoning Port Group was inaugurated. In March, oil giant Saudi Aramco entered into a joint venture with a Chinese company in Panjin to build a world-class petrochemical base with an investment of more than $10 billion. In May, Wanda Group announced an 80 billion yuan investment in Shenyang. In June, Evergrande Group signed an agreement with Shenyang to invest about 120 billion yuan in new energy vehicles.