Haixi: Industrial Upgrading through Development of a Circular Economy

Boosting Emerging Industry

Haixi is encouraging and developing emerging industries, such as new energy, new materials, and new business modes, characteristic bio-industry, and modern services. The prefecture is building lithium battery, photovoltaic, and photo thermal industry clusters, to make emerging industry a significant growth pillar.

The development of facility agriculture has boosted the local planting industry remarkably in recent years.

The focus of its new energy industry is raw material production, equipment manufacturing, system integration, and product application. Haixi will build a new energy system including photovoltaic (five gigawatt), photo-thermal (four gigawatt) and wind power (three gigawatt), and increase the share of clean energy to more than 80 percent in its power supply. In doing so it will create a national-level new energy industry demonstration base.

With leading enterprises as the core, and by establishing investment and financing, development and design, manufacturing, installation and testing systems, as well as operation management, Haixi will concentrate on technical research and market exploitation of photovoltaic and wind power generation, power transmission, and smart power grids, as well as integral elevation of the new energy industry.

Through a reshuffle of upstream and downstream enterprises, Haixi will realize a broader scope and optimum distribution of resources and scale expansion by allocating resources to competent enterprises. Via strategic planning and policy guidance, the prefecture will thus form an industrial development pattern of clear goals and distinct local features.

To foster the new material industry Haixi will, on the back of its advantageous salt lake chemical, petrochemical, coal, and metallurgical industries, give priority to chemicals, new energy, building and metallic materials, extending the industrial chain and expanding product added value. Haixi highlights new materials, such as magnesium-base alloy, nickel, cobalt, lithium battery, high-end chemical composites, and polymer and whisker materials, with the aim of creating an advantageous new materials industry agglomeration.

As a nod to the “Made in China 2025” strategy, Haixi will beef up its manufacturing industry to include photovoltaic, wind power, electric car, drone, high speed rail components, military materiels, and high-end equipment.

To cultivate new business models, Haixi will promote deep integration of Internet and other industries, formulating a new strain of economic development. By developing broadband, digital technology and big data industry, Haixi will hasten smart-city construction in Golmud and Delingha, thus impelling construction of information service centers.

To expand the e-commerce economic scale and cultivate a group of major business portals and e-business enterprises, Haixi will promote a combined system of traditional and online marketing by building a bulk commodity exchange center for potash fertilizer, inorganic salts, sodium carbonate, and goji berries. To promote the development of e-business in rural areas, Haixi has built a two-way channel for urban manufacturing products heading to the countryside and for rural agricultural products reaching city dwellers.

The prefecture will also accelerate the application of the Internet of Things and development of Internet finance, and support Internet-based financial products, services, and technological and platform innovation. It will moreover develop P2P borrowing and crowd-funding, and encourage financial institutions to build innovative online platforms.

Meanwhile, Haixi is developing emerging service industries such as modern logistics, finance, science and technology services, information consumption, as well as energy conservation and environmental protection.

To strengthen characteristic bio-industry and boost the local goji berry industry whose value is expected to reach RMB 10 billion, Haixi has established a goji berry plantation standard and built a plant base on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It has also extended the deep-processing industrial chain and build industrial parks in Delingha and Dulan.

Haixi strives to develop the animal husbandry sector and improves relevant infrastructures, such as fence-building, chicken breeding, drinking water facilities, and grass fodder plantations. Breeding and processing bases for various breeds of cattle, yak, sheep and goat are in the works.

In developing controlled environmental agriculture, Haixi is concentrating on fruit and vegetable bases in Golmud, Delingha, Dulan, and Uland, and building up local processing and logistic sectors. The prefecture is also propelling the integrative development of animal husbandry and industry in efforts to develop urban husbandry and tourism agriculture.

With the aim of promoting the modern service industry, Haixi will vigorously galvanize the tourism market and develop tourism products by propagating local attractions, most prominently the Chaka Salt Lake and Golmud. The prefecture will also develop industrial tourism relating to photovoltaic power generation and the Qarhan salt pan; hold cultural festivals and other activities, and strengthen the marketing of its main tourist routes. Haixi also has plans to showcase local scenic spots with cultural connotations, with its ultimate aim to boost the tourism industry with regards passenger flow volume and income.

In its drive to develop the cultural industry, Haixi is proactively cultivating a cultural market and new cultural businesses with a view to constructing cultural industrial parks and characteristic cultural brands.

Goji berries.

It will develop modern logistics by building comprehensive logistics parks in Golmud, Delingha, and Da Qaidam, as well as logistics centers in such areas as Qarhan, Huatugou, Xiangride, Nuomuhong, and Chaka. By promoting facets of the traditional service industry like commerce, accommodation, and catering, Haixi will enhance its service level by building a network of modern community services covering pensions, health care, nursing, property management, and care for the elderly.

As early as 2008, Qinghai Province confirmed its strategy of creating an eco-friendly province. In recent years, Haixi has consistently carried out key ecological engineering projects, including desertification control, the Northwest-North-Northeast China shelter belts, and ecological protection of the Baishu Mountain.

The prefecture has expanded its farmland by 4,000 hectares and forested land by 42,100 hectares. It now has 2.47 million hectares of conservation wetlands, and 1.22 million hectares of public forest. Haixi has thus recovered key ecologically functioning areas, significantly enlarged its lakes and wetlands, controlled desertification, and achieved a forest coverage rate of 3.5 percent – 0.5 percent more than in 2010.

Haixi has achieved remarkable results in its efforts to carry forward comprehensive control of the Muli mining area, through pit backfills and environmental remediation, and so resolved prominent environmental problems in mining areas. Local enterprises’ environmental awareness has been consistently raised with respect to energy conservation and emissions reduction, and energy consumption per unit of GDP consequently reduced.

Haixi’s focus also encompasses urban and rural forestation and beautification, evident in its comprehensively improved national and provincial highways, key scenic spots, and rural sanitation.

Haixi combines ecological remediation and industrial development, utilizing sandy wasteland to plant goji berries. The cultivated area of red goji berry now covers 30,600 hectares, generating a processing volume of 768 tons and a production value of RMB 3.07 billion per annum. The black goji berry cultivation area covers 1,850 hectares, with a 41-ton processing volume and a production value of RMB 510 million.