As a “node” and “pivot” city for the Chinese strategy of “The Belt and Road”, in the past two years, Qingdao has been integrating itself into the construction of “The Belt and Road”, striving to build itself into a comprehensive hub city for “The Belt and Road” and endeavoring to take the front row.

    The city of Qingdao has formulated the action plan for implementing “The Belt and Road” strategic economic and trade cooperation, summarized 106 key projects with a total investment of 60 billion USD with the countries and regions alongside the Belt and Road and it will continuously deepen the bilateral investment and trade cooperation with the countries along the line. Qingdao has established “economic cooperation partnership” with 20 cities of the countries along the line, which can help Qingdao expand the international market in terms of “scale”. Meanwhile, Qingdao is vigorously promoting the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation parks and helping its enterprises go out and take a solid foothold. The 16 overseas economic and trade cooperation parks under construction involve many fields including home appliance, rubber, textile, resources, agriculture and construction materials etc. and the total investment amount is expected to reach over 6 billion USD. In 2015, Qingdao signed a memorandum with Shanghai Cooperation Organization, according to which it is planned to establish “Eurasian Economic and Trade Cooperation Industrial Park”. The Qingdao Jiaozhou State Level Economic and Technological Development Zone will participate in the park construction. Currently this project has obtained recognition and support from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

    In terms of opening new external channels, Qingdao has been continuously optimizing the cooperation pattern of marine ports, which means Qingdao has communication and cooperation with 15 major ports of 12 countries. It will speed up the construction of Jiaodong New Airport, add 8 air routes to Busan and Inchon, intensify 12 air routes to Osaka and Inchon and the number of domestic and foreign cities which can arrive directly by air from Qingdao exceeds 70. Meanwhile, Qingdao will push forward the application for national demonstration multimodal transport project for Qingdao Qianwan Port and the combined marine and railway transport project of Jiaozhou Railway Container Center, open the direct train of “Qingdao-Zhengzhou-Center Asia” and open up the international logistic channel of “combined land and marine transport”.

    Qingdao will also push forward the integration reform of the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, lower the enterprise costs of customs clearance and logistics by 20%-30% and shorten the customs clearance time by 7.2 hours. The banking institutions in Qingdao will launch a separate credit plan to meet in priority the funding requirement for the key projects on “the Belt and Road”.

    At the same time, Qingdao will strengthen cultural and educational exchanges with the countries and regions along “the Belt and Road”. Only in 2015, Qingdao has established sister cities with Hyderabad from Indian and GrandPort from Mauritius and friendly cooperation relationship with Manado from Indonesia and Dunedin from New Zealand. The “Qingdao Day” campaign for the 2015 Italy Milan World Exposition has been held and Qingdao has broadcasted its images and brands on 15 mainstream media of the countries and regions along “the Belt and Road”.

    In addition, Qingdao has been continuously strengthening overall cooperation with these countries along the line in many fields such as sports, food, education, sanitation and arts. Only in 2015, Qingdao has hosted many influential international events including the International Education Informatization Conference, World Leisure Games and Qingdao International Beet Festival and many exchange activities including “China Qingdao” Trimaran Record-breaking Voyage in the Arctic Ocean and marine “Silk Road”, Malaysian Gourmet Exhibition and friendly football matches among teenagers from the Sino-South Korean friendly cities, brought about the cooperation between Shandong University and Hebrew University of Israel, between Qingdao University and Uruguay Republican University, between Ocean University of China and University of Otago from New Zealand, between Australia-China International Medical Group and Qingdao Central Hospital.