New deals boost high-tech zone

Emerging industries and e-commerce projects to speed up development

Xi'an's high-tech zone agreed on a range of emerging industry projects during the Investment and Trade Forum for Cooperation between East and West China, which finished on May 26.

A total of 44 project deals, worth 50.69 billion yuan ($8.12 billion), in the high-tech zone were signed during the four-day forum.

Among the projects, eight were from Fortune 500 companies.

China's home appliance retailer, Suning, plans to build a multifunctional base in the zone, which is expected to speed up development of an e-commerce industrial cluster there.

The high-tech zone in the capital city of Shaanxi is the engine for the province's economic growth.

"Considering deals made during the forum and the revenue growth in the past, the zone's annual revenue for 2014 will reach 1,000 billion yuan," said Zhao Hongzhuan, the zone's chief official.

Revenue in 2013 totaled 885.3 billion yuan with a rise of 30 percent, which ranked the zone third out of the 114 State-level high-tech zones in the country.

Export and import volumes reached $13.28 billion in 2013, accounting for 65 percent of that in Shaanxi province.

In the first quarter of this year, the zone's export and import volumes reached $5.5 billion, up 119.13 percent compared to that of last year.

Zhao said in recent years the zone constantly restructured.

"Now the industrial structure of the zone is very well-developed and there are a range of emerging industries settling in the zone, which will bring some substantial development," he said.

Emerging industries include four industrial chains - semiconductor, telecommunications, biomedicine, and software and information service.

In the semiconductor sector, a group of high-tech companies led by Samsung Electronics set up their research centers and headquarters in the zone. Samsung built an electronic R&D center and a data R&D center in 2013.

In the telecommunications sector, smart phone companies like Huawei Technologies and ZTE generated revenue of more than 100 billion yuan.

Johnson & Johnson Inc established a production base in the zone last year, which started the formation of a cluster of biomedicine industries.

The high-tech zone's software park is home to 23 Fortune 500 companies in the IT sector, including IBM and Intel.

The software and information service sector generated 104.37 billion yuan in 2013.

There were more than 1,000 companies from more than 30 countries and regions including the United States, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei registered in the zone at the end of 2013.

Of these, more than 130 were Fortune 500 and multinational companies.

In the investment and trade forum that wrapped up last week, the zone joined 44 new projects from the high-tech industry.

The zone's e-commerce industrial cluster is expected to expand when Suning joins.

Suning is China's largest home appliance retailer and has more than 1,700 stores around the country and an e-commerce platform.

The company invested 2 billion yuan in the zone for the development of its e-commerce base in Southwest China.

The base will include an e-commerce center, logistics and delivery department, customer service center and a "big data" research center.

All the business conducted in the base is estimated to generate more than 15 billion yuan.

Sina, the country's online media company, will invest 100 million yuan to set up an operating center in the zone for its video game business.

The center will hire 3,000 employees and is expected to generate 1 billion yuan in three years. For the investors, the zone has a mature industrial environment, human resources and a variety of government supports.

A staff member from the zone said that the development of the zone was focused on forming an industrial chain that offers human resources and facilities for R&D and production.

The zone allocated 1 billion yuan to support emerging industries since 2012 and financing agencies provide services to the companies.

Contact the writers at luhongyan@chinadaily.com.cn and malie@chinadaily.com.cn