The coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province established an Ocean Engineering Equipment Industry Association in its High-tech Industrial Development Zone, on Dec 23, to provide a bridge between business and government and develop its ocean engineering equipment.

The association is starting with several dozen enterprises and institutions, including the CSIC (Qingdao) Rail Transit Equipment Co, Qingdao Yongtai Shipping Supply Co and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Acoustics Institute.

Because the zone is putting all its effort into becoming a national ocean engineering equipment industrial base it will use the association to help make Qingdao a center of the industry, and has obtained government approval for an Ocean Equipment Industrial Park with several dozen companies and scholars and experts from China and abroad at a total cost of at least 11-billion yuan ($1.7 billion).