High-tech companies give fresh momentum to northeastern region

A robot plays a musical instrument at a national robots championship contest held at the Harbin Institute of Technology in July 2014. [Photo/IC]

China's northeastern industrial heartland is on course for a revival in its fortunes as local governments take measures to restructure the local economy through upgrading heavy industry and cooperating with more developed coastal provinces.

A number of high-tech companies from coastal provinces are fueling the region's restructuring drive, supported by local policy support and government plans to connect coastal regions with the northeast.

In 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission released guidelines calling on the northeastern region to learn from the experiences of southern provinces and take steps to attract more investment.

Hytera Communications, a leading provider of innovative land mobile radio communications solutions based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, is one of the high-tech companies which has moved its research base from Shenzhen to Harbin.

Song Qintao, the company's assistant manager, said: "We chose to establish the research base in Harbin because the costs of building it there were much lower than in Shenzhen," said.

Referring to the nearby Harbin Institute of Technology, one of China's best engineering institutes, he said: "We can recruit some of the best young talents here."

The institute's proximity has provided a unique source of expertise, with a large proportion of Hytera's employees in Harbin having graduated from it.

In the next two years, the company plans to expand its research team, increasing the payroll from 600 to 1,000, and generate 2 billion yuan ($289 million) in output.

With strong policy support, the region's economic growth has been on the track to recover.

The latest statistics show that the GDP in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang rose 5.4 percent, 4 percent and 5.1 percent year-on-year, respectively, in the first three quarters, according to the data from the NBS.