Ningbo Municipal Government : Ningbo to speed up city internationalization

Recently, the "program of action for Ningbo to speed up city internationalization" has been jointly launched by Ningbo Municipal Party Committee and Ningbo Municipal Government. Nine short-term or mid-term action plans will be carried out to realize the new round of comprehensive opening driven by city internationalization and to enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of the city. In the following decade, great efforts will be made to build Ningbo into the regional center of the city cluster in the Yangtze River Delta area, and by 2030, Ningbo will have become an influential international city in the Asian-Pacific area.

The No.1 action is to "accelerate the construction of the international trade center". According to the program, great breakthroughs will be made in such aspects as the construction of a regional import center, the promotion of the cross-border e-commerce and the construction of national service outsourcing demonstration city. By 2020, the International Trade and Exhibition Center will have been converted into a regional international trade corporate headquarters base, an international conversion and exhibition center, an exhibition and trade zone for import/export products and equipment, and a pilot for import/export e-commerce platform, with the cross-border e-commerce trade volume exceeding 10 billion dollars.

Internationalization will be promoted and breakthroughs will also be made in such fields as the expansion of investment access, the introduction of major projects in manufacturing and modern service industry, the settlement of headquarter enterprises and R & D institutions, and the improvement of the scale and quality of foreign investment. Among others, it is an important task to speed up the internationalization of finance. By exploring and establishing such equity investment funds as the development fund for shipping trade and the fund for ship industry, Ningbo will further improve the functions of the bonded zone, allow qualified companies to open offshore accounts, and thus speed up the development of offshore finance.

The construction of the international opening platform will be promoted. The program of action contains detailed provisions for the integrated improvement and transformation and upgrading of the special customs regulatory zones, the implementation of high-end Sino-foreign cooperative development of key areas and the construction of the platform for economic and trade cooperation with Taiwan. For instance, an international first-class motor industry cluster will be built in the Hangzhou Bay New Zone, as well as an international new urban zone and a new base for industrial transformation. And the Dongqian Lake Tourist Resort will be built into an important international conference base and an international base for high-end headquarters economy in East China. In the meanwhile, Ningbo will take initiatives in some major fields, to gradually achieve free investment, trade facilitation, financial internationalization and administrative institutionalization.

The other actions include accelerating the construction of a leading international port, strengthening the international innovation functions, strengthening the construction of international cultural functions, constructing an internationalized living environment, creating an internationalized soft environment, and making efforts to form a city image of internationalization.