Shihezi Economic and Technological Development Zone

Shihezi Economic and Technological Development Zone is located in the south of Shihezi city, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, bordering the G30 Expressway and the second Eurasian Continental Bridge, a train line that starts at Lianyungang in East China's Jiangsu province and passes through the Alataw Pass in Xinjiang before eventually arriving at Rotterdam in the Netherlands (the section in Xinjiang is called Beijiang Railway).

On Dec 20, 2013, it was upgraded to a State-level high-tech zone by the State Council and became the first of its kind in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

The move was expected to inject more vitality to the technology-intensive and strategic emerging industries to the Corps.

With a planned area of 137 sq km, the zone has a construction area of 44.43 sq km and is the only high-tech zone that boasts the characteristics of corps in China. It is devoted to developing and industrializing cutting edge technologies and growing into an innovation-driven sci-tech city on the Silk Road Economic Belt.

It has formed an emerging industrial system featuring information technology and internet, life science and health care, energy conservation and environmental protection, general aviation and modern services.

The IT and internet industry includes businesses such as cloud computing, e-commerce, information security and software service, industrial Internet of Things (Internet plus industry), agricultural IoT (Internet plus agriculture).

The life science and health care industry covers the wine, medical health service, nursing care for the aged and biological technology.

The energy conservation and environmental protection industry ranges from materials, equipment to waste treatment and air pollution control.

The general aviation industry involves navigation operation, aviation manufacturing and logistics.

The modern service industry includes the sci-tech services, high-end commerce, education and training as well as cultural creativity.

Last year, it was included in the construction plan of Urumqi-Changji-Shihezi independent innovation demonstration zone, which aims to grow into an innovation-driven demonstration area of scientific and technological achievement transformation and international scientific and technological innovation and cooperation, as well as a cluster of emerging industries along the Silk Road Economic Belt.

In 2017, the zone continued to attract investment and built industrial bases for building materials, chemicals, textiles, food and beverage, energy supply and modern services.

The zone signed eight contracts, with each of them receiving more than 100 million yuan ($15.61 million) in funding and the total contract value of 12 billion yuan. Among the eight contracts, there were three that ranged from 500 million yuan to 1 billion yuan and four above 1 billion yuan.

They included a 6-billion-yuan cloud computing industrial park and a 2.8-billion-yuan electrical equipment project, a 2.7-billion-yuan semiconductor monocrystalline silicon chip project and a 1-bllion-yuan tourism project.