An Economic Tale from the “Double City”

By staff reporter YI FAN

The Friendship Monument.	The Beijing Huiyuan Beverage & Food Group Co., Ltd. production line in Shuangcheng.	Xiwang Square.

A groaning bulldozer shattered the stillness of Shuangcheng one day in 1987 as the ground was broken on the first Sino-foreign joint venture in Harbin, Northeast China. By 2004, Nestle Shuangcheng had turned in RMB 327 million in taxes, and the old county town had established an economic structure based on agriculture, animal husbandry, processing and trade.

Shuangcheng is the southern gateway to China’s northernmost province of Heilongjiang. The city was established in 1814, during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). It was named Shuangcheng (Double City) because it encompassed the Jin Dynasty (1115 – 1234) cities of Dahe and Buda. Shuangcheng was the cradle of the Manchurian civilization, and an old saying testifies its past abundance: Brandish a rod and you may strike a deer, dip a hand into water and you may scoop up a fish, and look in your wok and a pheasant may have flown in.

Shuangcheng has been an agricultural city since its birth. Today it is a major contributor to the national granary and also always the largest grain producer and animal husbandry production base in Heilongjiang Province.

Shuangcheng locals believe that “stability depends on agriculture, while prosperity depends on industry.” That is why the city has in recent years formed a “pyramid-shaped” mode of economic development with grain production at the base, animal husbandry forming the body, and processing and marketing at the top.

The city spent some years fumbling around before it found a sure track. When China first began its transition from a planned to a market-oriented economy, Shuangcheng was an agricultural county. Despite its bumper harvests, it remained under the poverty line for many years. This paradoxical situation brought home to local leaders that Shuangcheng could not prosper on agriculture alone. Industrial development was necessary but tough, particularly in the late 1980s when Shuangcheng’s state-owned enterprises went bankrupt one after the other.

Finally Shuangcheng (now a county-level city) decided to proceed from where it stood. It built an economy rooted in agriculture, extended by animal husbandry and elevated by deep processing and trade. This strategy was effective, as evidenced by the first batch of milk products that rolled off the Nestle production line in 1990.

Before Nestle Shuangcheng arrived, local farmers eked out a meager existence. Today, the Sino-Swiss JV is one of China’s top milk producers. It has brought dramatic changes to the lives of some 28,000 local rural households. It has engendered hundreds of related enterprises and supported a corn-dairy cattle-milk products chain that has helped Shuangcheng to progress from a big grain county to a local economic powerhouse.

Other big-name food companies like Wahaha and Want Want have since followed Nestle into the city, helping Shuangcheng transform itself into a large-scale foodstuffs factory. Others have followed. In 2005, 51 investment projects worth RMB 2.08 billion were signed in the city, 37 of which invested more than RMB 10 million. Today Shuangcheng has constructed four colossal and interlinked industrial food, dairy, egg and meat processing “machines” that gobble up 1.3 billon kilograms of its annual grain output, and churn out added value of RMB 1.5 billion. With 80 percent of its rural households involved in the industrial chains, 65 percent, or RMB 2,509, of the city’s annual per capita rural income came from that aspect last year.

Shuangcheng is transforming its resource advantages into economic benefits, which it processes into competitive gains. The city’s efforts were acknowledged last year when it won the national “County/City Star of Food Industry” award. They have come a long way, but the industrious people of Shuangcheng are determined to advance still farther.

Shuangcheng Pedestrian Street.	Jinyuchi Villas.	Chengxu Gate.

Facts about Shuangcheng

Shuangcheng is a famous historical and cultural town in Northeast China, and cradle of the Manchurian civilization. It covers an area of 3,112 square kilometers. In 1988 the State Council upgraded it from a county to a county-level city. It has under its jurisdiction nine towns, 15 townships and 246 villages, with a total population of 800,000. As the southern gateway to Heilongjiang Province, Shuangcheng has geographical advantages and good infrastructure.

The Beijing-Harbin and Lafa-Binjiang railways and Tongjiang-Sanya, Beijing-Harbin, Harbin-Qianguo and Harbin-Dalian highways cut through the city, and Harbin International Airport is just 30 kilometers away. The main navigation course on the Songhua River runs through Shuangcheng’s Yongsheng and Linjiang Townships.

Shuangcheng is Heilongjiang’s largest animal husbandry and grain producer, and an important national grain base. Over the years the city has been honored for its achievements in the advancement and development of afforestation, sports, pre-school education and the promotion of agricultural technology. It is also known for its errenzhuan (a song-dance duet), shadow puppetry and yangko dance, all of which have earned Shuangcheng the epithet “hometown of folk arts.”