Wen Xueguo, Executive Vice President of Shanghai Academy, led a team to undertake research in Jiaxing during October 26-27. Wang Hongbo, Deputy Secretary-General of the CPC Jiaxing Municipal Committee and Director of the Policy Research Office, and Li Shunhe, Deputy Director of the Policy Research Office, received the guests. On October 26, the research team attended the 8th Lecture themed Frontier Applied Economics held by Shanghai Academy, and experts from 12 relevant government departments in Jiaxing participated in the lecture as well. The attendees had in-depth discussions about issues, such as, how to make Jiaxing fully geared up to Shanghai, and how to build Jiaxing into a garden city of international quality.

Professor Zhu Yonggen from Jiaxing Development and Reform Commission delivered a report themed The Development of Jiaxing beyond 2020. The report dwelt on three aspects: i) What is Jiaxing and what are the advantages of Jiaxing? ii) What is the development path for Jiaxing beyond 2020? iii) What are the key aspects that Jiaxing must work on beyond 2020? Regarding the issues, Zhu Yonggen said, Jiaxing enjoys unique advantages for development. First, it boasts profound culture and countless scholars in its long history, and is the birthplace of the CPC; second, it boasts developed industries and is a city with high living standards; third, it not only focuses on research innovation, but also is a highland for opening-up. Through analysis, Zhu Yonggen said, Jiaxing’s development path is to improve its comprehensive competitiveness and innovation capability, beef up its degree of opening-up, and enhance its level of internationalization. It must give focus to fields including transport, innovation, industries, and opening-up.

Afterwards, Dr. Zhen Yanlin, Chief Planner of the Jiaxing Bureau of Urban Planning, gave a detailed report about urban planning in Jiaxing. He said, Jiaxing must keep up with the times in urban planning, and make corresponding adjustments to urban planning pursuant to the spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress. By far, Jiaxing has gone beyond many objectives set in early urban planning, such as the expected size of population and land. Corresponding adjustment is urgently needed in new planning, with focus on strengthening the development of the four major functions of Jiaxing, i.e. logistics & trade, scientific and educational innovation, leisure tourism and advanced manufacturing. He noted that as a city that lies between Shanghai and Hangzhou, Jiaxing must have a different positioning from Shanghai. He also replied to questions including Jiaxing’s advantages in attracting talents compared with Shanghai, whether there will be a loss of talents, and how to solve the problem of beautiful Xizha but dilapidated Wuzhen.

On October 27, the research team and the Policy Research Office of the CPC Jiaxing Municipal Committee had talks chaired by Wang Hongbo. The meeting was attended by Xu Bing, Deputy Director of the Jiaxing Business Bureau, Zhou Hongxia, Deputy Director of Jiaxing Municipal Commission of Tourism, ZhuangYu’e, Deputy Director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Jiaxing, and Bian Shulan, Deputy Director of Jiaxing Municipal Exchanges Office, who held fruitful discussions with the research team about the issues related to respective departments. After hearing the opinions of various sides, Wen Xueguo said, although Jiaxing enjoys a bigger area of development than Shanghai, it has been well developed compared with some cities in western and central China. He thought the fundamental difference between Jiaxing and Shanghai in development lay in the varying resources allocation by the government. At present, the flow of production factors is not fully free in the Yangtze River Delta, but in spite of that, the positive strategic deployment by the CPC Jiaxing Municipal Committee plays a notable role in promoting local economic and social development, and contributes greatly to the fast growth of China’s economy. Of course, there are many problems to be solved behind the flourishing economy, and that requires the continued efforts of Jiaxing and Shanghai to increase the awareness of cooperation and explore more possibilities for win-win cooperation.

(Article by Li Huan, photos by Lv Jing, Lin Yuping)