Intertidal Beach Development Propels Jiangsu's Coastal Economy

By GAO YAN

JIANGSU Province is endowed with a coastline of 1,000 kilometers, most of which is formed of silt. But in the past its coastal settlements, including the port cities of Nantong, Yancheng and Lianyungang, often complained that their coastal beaches were only good enough to be banked up for farming or raising aquatic products.

With rapid economic development and shrinking land resources, the coastlines, along with their 600,000 hectares of intertidal beaches, have become valuable land resources for the province. In April 2007, the provincial government decided to shift its local development focus from riverine to coastal areas, signaling great prospects for intertidal beach industries. The Jiangsu Province Sand Beach Exploitation and Investment Co., Ltd. (Jiangsu Sand Beach) grasped the opportunity and embarked on a development mission in a scientific, integrated and environmentally-friendly approach.

Golden autumn at Yancheng's Doulong Wetland.                                                             Dong Ning

A Leader in Sand Beach Industries

Founded on March 20, 1996 in the provincial capital of Nanjing, Jiangsu Sand Beach is a state-owned company affiliated with the provincial government. Within the first three years of its establishment, it completed its strategic deployment by setting up branches in Yancheng, Lianyungang and Nantong, Jiangsu's three largest coastal cities. In July 2006, the company became fully fledged after merging with the former Jiangsu Provincial Trade Assets Management Company.

In the decade since, Jiangsu Sand Beach has established its central position in the coastal development of the province. By the end of 2007, the company had 26 wholly-owned, holding and sharing companies, had invested capital totaling RMB 2 billion, organized and implemented projects across 90,000 hectares of sand beaches, and reclaimed 50,000 hectares for farming and aquiculture. These projects not only provided land badly needed for key national and provincial projects, such as the Huaihe River conservancy, Dafeng Harbor and Shenhua Group wind power generation farms, but also provided some 50,000 jobs for local residents. Meanwhile, they enabled local farmers within these areas to reap an average annual income 20 percent higher than that of farmers in other parts of the province.

A Sustainable Approach

The importance of intertidal beaches to Jiangsu is not only measured by their economic value as the province's "last bulk land reserve," but also by their role in protecting local ecology and regulating the climate. Intertidal zones are known as the "kidneys of the Earth." Therefore, developers have to solve the contradiction between rational development and effective protection from the very beginning.

Jiangsu Sand Beach has constantly reaffirmed the concept that "sand beaches are precious resources" since the first day of its operation and practiced economical use of the beaches. It has set a high threshold for the entry of projects, rejecting any that might cause pollution. Over the past decade it has developed and perfected a dynamic management mechanism for comprehensive development of the beaches, based on diversified investment, market operation and corporate management, propelling the rapid growth of the beach industry and its sustainable development.

Agriculture is an ideal means of the beach development that can both protect the local environment and utilize intertidal resources. In recent years Jiangsu Sand Beach has concentrated on high-efficiency agriculture and established six high-efficiency intertidal beach agricultural/aquicultural production bases. They include a 6,700-hectare aquatic farm that produces more than 80,000 tons of allogynogenetic silver crucian a year, at a per-hectare output value of RMB 150,000; a 3,300-hectare marine breeding base at Nantong's Ninggang Reclamation Area, mainly raising crabs, clams and balloon fish, also yielding an output value of RMB 150,000 per hectare; a 1,300-hectare American shad (Alosa sapidissima) raising and processing base; a 400-hectare eel farm with a per-hectare yield of more than RMB 1 million; a 5,300-hectare desalinated aquatic experimental farm in cooperation with the Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences; and a 4,000-hectare green food production base. In addition, many agricultural projects sponsored by Jiangsu Sand Beach branches have also developed quickly.

New Economic Growth

Jiangsu Sand Beach envisioned great prospects for growth with the provincial government's strategic shift of development from riverine to coastal areas in 2007. It has hence worked out ambitious targets of extensive and intensive development for 2010, aiming to achieve total assets of RMB 10 billion and sales income of RMB 10 billion, with profits exceeding RMB 200 million, establishing the group as a modern beach industry giant in the coastal economy of Jiangsu.

To realize these goals, the group has plunged into consolidation and upgrading of its six major production bases, while promoting five leading processing projects developed by its branches. At the same time, it has constructed several specialized markets, including an intertidal beach aquatic product trade center and meat and liquor wholesale markets, and built a 3,300-hectare aquatic ecology sightseeing garden at the Fayang Fishing Village, and a green ecology industrial park in Sheyang County. Overall, the company has played an active role in nurturing new economic growth in Jiangsu Province, and the results for coastal development are plain to see.