City focuses on good environment, strong industries and rich culture, Ding Congrong and Li Yang report.

Italian explorer Marco Polo described Taizhou as a small place where people enjoyed every comfort and happiness that life could provide, in his travel notes 700 years ago.

Today Taizhou remains one of the happiest and safest cities in China.

The city is perched on the north part of the Yangtze River Delta in central Jiangsu province and in its 2,100-year history has been known for its comfortable climate, advanced education and developed agriculture and industries. Over time Taizhou has evolved from a small village to a big city with 5 million residents.

The area’s long agricultural history has cultivated a strong sense of environmental awareness among Taizhou people. The city has been an important grain production base for the nation since the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Local people believe that protecting Taizhou’s environment and ecology contributes to national food security.

The north of Taizhou lies in the Huaihe River basin, and the south in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Nearly 30 percent of Taizhou is covered in lakes and rivers, which makes it an ideal waterway transport hub as well as place to fish and plant rice.

Handicrafts and commerce have prospered with the inflow of commodities, capital and people.

Openness and material richness made Taizhou a cradle for scholars, scientists, artists and senior officials of national importance, including former Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Taizhou was one of the cities to open up to the West during China’s market reform in the 1980s.

The city’s convenient transportation, efficient government, quality workers, who are cheaper than those in Suzhou and Shanghai, and good business environment attracted more than 1,200 foreign enterprises from more than 40 nations and regions around the world.

It takes just a morning to register a new business in Taizhou, a process that often takes about a week in other cities.

More than 2,200 Chinese enterprises in Taizhou export their products and services to 170 nations and regions in the world. Pharmaceuticals, electronics, new energy and equipment manufacturing are four major industries in Taizhou, which have replaced old low-added-value labor-intensive industries.

The new industries create jobs and generate driving forces for continuous economic growth.

Taizhou’s economy has maintained double-digit growth in recent years, despite the negative influence of the global financial crisis and slowdown of the Chinese economy. Last year, per capita GDP in Taizhou hit $11,000.

A good natural environment, strong new industries and rich cultural resources are Taizhou’s three current main focuses promoted by the local government.

Industrial backbone

Jiangsu provincial government decided to make pharmaceuticals a backbone industry in Taizhou 10 years ago. More than 2,000 professionals work in more than 50 research and development centers in the city and more than 400 pharmaceutical innovations have been implemented in Taizhou so far.

Vaccine production, new preparation of pharmaceutical chemicals, biological medicines, medical apparatus and instruments and Chinese patent medicine extraction are the five main industries developing on a large scale in Taizhou. These have attracted dozens of leading Chinese companies to the city as well as eight global pharmaceutical giants, including German Boehringer-Ingelheim and AstraZeneca from the United Kingdom.

Taizhou pharmaceutical high and new technology development zone is the main base for these enterprises and R & D centers.

The 30-sq-km zone is made up of areas for R & D, production, expos and trade, medical treatment, medical education and living. So far the zone is the largest and most comprehensive bioengineering and pharmaceutical industry base in China.

Taizhou is the permanent host city for the annual China international pharmaceutical expo. For the fifth expo, which was held in October, more than 3,000 businessmen from 400 pharmaceutical enterprises from around the world brought more than 5,000 patents and innovations to Taizhou.

Eco-environment

Taizhou has endeavored not to compromise environmental protection during industrial development.

The government agreed on plans to build a 17.38-sq-km ecological reserve in the north of the city to provide an ecological protective screen for Taizhou. The area’s four functions will be ecological preservation, tourism, cultural entertainment and agriculture.

In recent years the government has increased its efforts in ecological restoration by building a forestry belt along the Yangtze River’s north bank and large wetland reserves in its water areas. These environmental project areas have also become weekend trip destinations for residents.

All three county-level cities under Taizhou government’s administration are models of ecological preservation and environmental protection.

According to Taizhou Party chief Lan Shaomin, the government plans to build Taizhou into a national model for ecological cities by 2020. We need not only the passion to make fast progress, but also the mentality to implement good governance every day. We must pay attention to every detail in city planning,” said Lan.

Cultural service

Public cultural service is an important detail that is often overlooked in many Chinese cities. Taizhou’s government spent 400 million yuan ($66 million) building a public theater five years ago. More than 200 performances have been staged in the theater, with more than 200,000 viewers.

The government also built a new museum, art gallery, library, youth activity center and city planning exhibition hall near the theater to form a new cultural center in the northwest corner of the city, called Zhoushanhe new city.

Old business streets were also created as tourist sites to show visitors Taizhou’s lifestyle and culture.

A number of village libraries were set up for farmers and the government organizes troupes to put on free performances for villagers.

This year marks the 18th anniversary of Taizhou to be approved as a city and before it was administrated by the neighboring Yangzhou as a county.

Lan called on the people of Taizhou to continue the city’s legacy of innovation, perseverance and passion to usher their hometown into a new phase of development featuring a good environment, strong industries and rich cultural life.