Big hitters join hub to develop northwestern market

The Xi'an Hi-tech Industries Development Zone signed an agreement with Hangzhou Jinjiang Group in late May to establish optical film and solar cell film production bases with a total investment of 4.3 billion yuan ($632.6 million).

The listed company was founded in 1993, focusing on green energy, nonferrous metals, chemical engineering and new materials.

The project is expected to produce major parts for displays with an estimated annual output value of about 2.66 billion yuan. The company's solar film, which can realize a 16 percent conversion rate of solar power, is expected to reach annual sales of about 900 million yuan, according to the company's official website.

The XHTZ will have eight industrial clusters worth more than 100 billion yuan. They focused on semiconductors, intelligent terminals, high-end equipment manufacturing, biomedicine, financial services, software information services, military-civil integration and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Chinese mobile phone producer ZTE announced it will produce all its tablets, personal computers, augmented reality and virtual reality products in a new production base in the zone.

The company invested 1.6 billion yuan to produce 15 million smart phones in the facility annually.

In March, Chinese home appliance producer Suning Holdings Group signed an agreement with the local government to construct its northwestern headquarters, an internet micro-credit branch and 200,000 square meters of commercial space in the zone, with a gross investment of 5 billion yuan.

United States-based Renalysis Medical Products invested 2.6 billion yuan to build a dialysis equipment research and production base in the zone. It will be ready to go into operation in 2019, and is expected to reap annual sales of more than 10 billion yuan in 10 years.

Statistics from the zone showed actual domestic investment in the zone reached 19.58 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2017, up 58.58 percent year-on-year, and foreign investment grew 18.3 percent to $802 million.

Li Yi, chief of the zone's Party committee, said everything the government does should serve to attract investment, since the government laid the foundation for the industrial and economic development of the zone.

The agreement with Hangzhou Jinjiang, for example, took only 57 days to complete.

Local government staff uploaded the information and gave approval for 30 companies within one day to launch the first airplane finance lease project in Northwest China in February.

"The high-tech zone should provide five-star services like nannies and waiters," Li said.

Chinese listed security equipment manufacturer Hikvision, a subsidiary of the State-owned China Electronics Technology Group, announced in January it will establish a research center with 10,000 employees in the zone.

The company produced smart parking robots, which can replace human drivers to move cars into compact parking spaces in two minutes.

Its smart storage robots can complete the whole process of weighing, scanning and recording images of 60 goods within one minute, decreasing time and labor costs.

Now the company has 20,000 staff around the world and registered trademarks in more than 120 countries and regions.

"We used 7 to 8 percent of our income to do scientific research", said Zheng Yibo, vice-president of Hikvision.

Chen Zongnian, chairman of the company, said about half of the employees are technicians.

"Xi'an has rich human resources, especially in the electronic information industry, due to its high number of higher educational institutes," Chen said. "The local government has also constructed a very good environment to attract talent. We will make most use of its advantages and promote the development and application of our video technology."

He said the city also has a bright future in the economic development of China's northwestern areas.

chenmeiling@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/08/2017 page15)