Creation of a New Local Economic Engine

By LIU HUANZHI

Blueprint of Shenfu New Town.

    LIAONING Governor Chen Zhenggao said recently that Shenfu New Town would become an engine for Fushun's future economic growth and the hope of the city's escalating and bold overall development. The new town occupies 605 square kilometers in the environs between the two industrial cities of Shenyang and Fushun in Liaoning Province.

    Shenyang is the largest city in northeastern China, and more than 10 million people live in the city and its suburbs. It is also the country's largest machine building base. Fushun is a heavy industrial city, and was once a "coal capital." However, in 2009 the State Council designated it a "resources exhausted" city.

    In August 2008 the provincial government raised the idea of inter-city integration and proposed a holistic development plan for the joint area between Shenyang and Fushun by building Shenfu New Town as the dynamic core of the conjunct area. According to the plan, Fushun will use the new town to develop high-tech industries and advanced equipment manufacturing and logistics, while improving its river and ecological systems, hopefully reviving the depleted city within three to five years.

    The new town will incorporate three districts: the northern ecological tourism zone including exotic residential areas and tourism facilities, the ecological urban center featuring efficient service industries, and the southern modern manufacturing area that highlights new and high technologies such as carbon fiber.

    Construction of infrastructure has been proceeding as planned and a number of projects have moved in, according to Wang Yang, mayor of Fushun. Though the global financial crisis has cast a shadow on investment in the new town, Wang Yang is confident of its rapid emergence with the full support of the provincial government.

    As a resource-depleted old industrial city, Fushun is troubled by many difficulties challenging its reform of state-owned enterprises, and is struggling through a tough period of industrial and economical transition. The planning and construction of Shenfu New Town is a significant development strategy to revive the old industrial city, and the new town is expected to be a powerful engine that will propel Fushun's development. "Fushun must grasp this opportunity firmly, strengthen our confidence, and blaze a new trail in regional economic integration," says Mayor Wang Yang.