Meihe devoted to industrial upgrading

"In the 1970s, local residents began to develop business channels for pine nut products," said Zhu." Meihekou has now become the world's largest pine nut processing center and distribution hub in Northeast Asia, accounting for 70 percent of the national processing volume and exporting to more than 30 countries and regions such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan."

"Located in the central part of the world's golden rice belt, the city integrated high-quality rice resource and created the regional public brand Meihe Rice," he said. "Meihe Rice ranks among the top 100 geographical rice brands in the world."

He also mentioned that the city has established the largest edible alcohol production base in Asia, with the capacity to produce 520,000 metric tons of alcohol annually, as well as the largest craft beer production base in Northeast China.

The city has promoted the development of convenience foods such as cold noodles, rice noodles and spicy hot pot catering to Northeastern tastes.

The total sales of the convenience food industry last year exceeded 1.3 billion yuan.

Facing the weakening of its geographical advantage and the rise of the e-commerce industry, which have seriously impacted its commerce and logistics industry, Meihekou has actively responded and sought changes.

"We have built several commercial facilities such as the Red Star Macalline Commercial Complex, the Eurasia Shopping Center and seafood markets to boost physical consumption," he said.

"Taking advantage of cooperation agreements between Jilin and Zhejiang provinces, we have built an e-commerce industrial park to drive e-commerce development, achieving a network transaction volume of 69.7 billion yuan in the first 10 months, with a year-on-year increase of 11.8 percent.

"At the same time, we have constructed the Transfar highway port project to comprehensively enhance logistics capabilities and the Agricultural Product Cold Chain Logistics Park project to create a distribution center for agricultural products in Northeast China," he added.

The cultural and tourism industry is the one that best reflects the innovative spirit of Meihekou, according to Zhu.

"Despite lacking inherent tourism resources, we have created well-known attractions such as Hailong Lake, Northeast Nightless City and Zhibei Village," he said. "We have established festival brands such as the Beer Festival and Water Splashing Festival, and the city has become a well-known tourist destination in Northeast China.

"Currently, we are actively exploring revolutionary resources such as the site of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee's meeting in Meihekou and Meihekou Railway Station, focusing on building it into a revolutionary tourism city," he said.

zhouhuiying@chinadaily.com.cn