Yantai racing ahead in boosting manufacturing industry

Visitors show interest in products from Yantai Changyu Pioneer Wine Co Ltd at an expo in Yantai, Shandong province. [Photo/China Daily]

Among the first batch of 14 cities to open to the world in 1984, Yantai city has lured some Fortune 500 companies over the years. Shanghai GM Dongyue Automobile Company settled in Yantai in 2003. Its Buick SUV Envision was a huge success in the United States.

The city has made great efforts to develop marine equipment manufacturing. Blue Whale 1, the ultra-deep-water semisubmersible drilling rig built by China Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore, the nation's largest semisubmersible platform manufacturer, conducted successful tests in the South China Sea in May 2017.

The government will also build certain new industries into major drivers of economic growth, namely information technology, food processing, non-ferrous metals and precious metals, high-end chemical materials, equipment manufacturing, automobiles, and medical and health care.

By 2020, Yantai aims to be a city of advanced manufacturing clusters. By 2022, it is the city's goal that the added value of its strategic emerging industries will be up to 20 percent of its overall added value.

Clocks made in the 1960s at the exhibition tracing the century-long history of China's clock industry at the Polaris Horologe Culture Museum in Yantai. [Photo by Wang Kaihao/China Daily]