The Yangtze River Economic Zone

Relying on the Yangtze River as a whole, it straddles the three major regions of China's east, middle and west, connecting the economic regions of 11 provinces and cities, including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. Relying on the Golden Waterway to promote the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt to create a new support belt for China’s economy, which is another major strategic decision proposed by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council for the development of the central and western regions following the “Western Development” and the “Rise of Central China”. The Yangtze River Economic Belt covers an area of approximately 2.05 million square kilometers, with a population and GDP exceeding 40% of the national total. The two strategic financial core areas, Jiangbeizui (Chongqing) and Lujiazui (Shanghai), located at both ends of each city, are increasingly becoming world-class financial centers. Since the Reform and Opening-up, the Yangtze River Economic Belt has developed into one of the regions with the strongest comprehensive strength and the greatest strategic support in China. To build the Yangtze River Economic Belt into a pioneering demonstration belt, an innovation-driven belt, and a coordinated development belt for the construction of ecological civilization in China will help build a new pattern of mutual support and benign interaction between the coastal regions and central and western regions.

Through Reform and Opening-up and the implementation of a number of major projects, the industries and infrastructure of the three “sectors” of the Yangtze River Delta, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone will be connected, factors will be flowed, and the market will be unified, so as to promote the orderly transfer of industries, to optimize and upgrade and build new towns, to highlight the advanced concept of insisting on ecological priority, green development, and giving priority to ecological environment protection. On July 21, 2013, Xi Jinping proposed during an inspection in Wuhan, Hubei, “The Yangtze River Basin should strengthen cooperation with others, give full play to the role of inland navigation, develop river-sea combined transportation, and turn the entire basin into a golden waterway.” The curtain of reshaping the Yangtze River Economic Belt has thus begun. In September 2014, the “Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt by Relying on the Golden Waterway” and the “Planning for Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Corridor of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (2014-2020)” were released, which proposed that the unique advantages of the Yangtze River Golden Waterway should be fully utilized, turning the Yangtze River Economic Belt into an “inland river economic belt with global influence”. Under the background of profound changes in the international environment and many contradictions in domestic development, relying on the Golden Waterway to promote the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt is conducive to tapping the huge domestic demand potential contained in the vast hinterland of the upper and middle reaches, promoting the expansion of economic growth space from the coast to the inland along the river, conducive to optimizing the industrial structure and urbanization layout along the Yangtze River, and promoting the quality and efficiency upgrade of China's economy, conducive to forming a pattern of complementary advantages, collaboration and interaction between the upper, middle and lower reaches, narrowing the development gap between the eastern, central and western regions, conducive to the construction of land-sea two-way opening up Corridor, fostering new competitive advantages in international economic cooperation and conducive to protecting the ecological environment of the Yangtze River, leading the construction of national ecological civilization, which has important practical and far-reaching strategic significance for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and realizing the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The report of the 19th CPC National Congress put forward the requirement of “protecting and not engaging in large-scale development”, which provides a clearer direction and requirements for the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.