Eight advantageous resources

7. Environment

Zhejiang has been working to carry out the "Great Bay Zone, Great Garden, Great Channel and Great Urban Area" initiative, also known as the "Four Greats" initiative, which is dedicated to carrying out industrial, tourism, transportation, and urban-rural renovations.

It has established several industrial platforms, including the Hangzhou Qiantang New Zone, the Ningbo Qianwan New Zone, the Shaoxing Binhai New Zone, and the Huzhou Nantaihu New Zone, and has announced plans to build four Poetry Road cultural belts to boost local tourism. The four belts consist of famous sites and scenic spots that were once praised by ancient Chinese poets, including the Grand Canal, the Qiantang River, and several ancient villages and towns. The city also plans to build 10 mountain parks and 10 island parks.

Last year, the province built 103.6 kilometers of subway and finished construction on the south station of the Hangzhou Railway, the Zhejiang Coastal Expressway was built and opened to traffic, the third phase of the Ningbo Lishe International Airport project was finished, and the Xiaoshan International Airport handled more than 40 million passengers.

In addition, Zhejiang has renovated Qiandao Lake's surrounding areas and established the Chun'an Special Ecological Zone, and the province's Ant Forest initiative received a 2019 "Champions of the Earth" award, the United Nations' highest environmental honor. The province also finished environmental renovations on most of its small towns, built 3,018 more A-level scenic villages, seven more towns, and 16 more villages of historic and cultural interest, and built 12,000 kilometers of highway in rural areas last year.

By updating the administrative examination & approval system as a breakthrough, Zhejiang is exerting itself to perfect the management of social affairs and public service functions so as to create a better soft environment for development. Measures such as providing one-stop service, a single-window service interface, parallel and online examination & approval as well as non-governmental investment project registration and archives, informed commitment system and complaint centers have been put in place. All of these have greatly shortened the time spent on examination & approval, bringing convenience to the general public.

8. Human Culture

One outstanding characteristic of Zhejiang's culture is the strong beat of its economic pulse. In line with "prosperity in Qiantang since ancient times" and represented by the Yongjia academic school in Wenzhou, the mindset of "equal focus on morality and profits, and on industry and commerce as foundations" began to take root in the feudal society, becoming a peculiar feature of Chinese culture and deeply affecting Zhejiang people's ideological concepts and behavioral patterns. Another characteristic of Zhejiang culture lies in the traditional creativity that draws on strengths of both the inland culture and ocean culture. It also mingles the essence of Wuyue culture and culture in the central plains of China, reflecting the exchanges between Chinese culture and western culture and forming a peculiar division in the Confucian culture.

Most distinctive in "Zhejiang spirit" is the enterprising spirit, featuring "Constant striving, perseverence, innovation and pragmatism", which a vivid portrait of Zhejiang people. They believed in "no business too small" in the era of planned economy. During that era, large groups of Zhejiang people left Zhejiang for different places over the country, where they were engaged in the jobs for which the locals would show contempt. Now, a number of them have worked their way to entrepreneurs of non-governmental enterprises whose market values exceed a hundred million RMB. Back at that time, they were collecting waste for recycling, fluffing cotton with a bow, repairing shoes and forging irons, etc. However, they had never regarded such laboring as a shame. Instead, they managed to grasp every opportunity and accumulated precious experience for their later undertakings. Nowadays, many entrepreneurs with great achievements in Zhejiang are still practicing the virtues of diligence and thrift formed when they started their businesses. This is an important reason why the economy in Zhejiang enjoys such sustainable, quick and benign development.

Among China's cultural celebrities, there are over one thousand persons of Zhejiang origin, which accounts for 1/6 of the nation's total. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, those with Zhejiang origin have accounted for nearly 1/5 of the academicians in the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering. Since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy, Zhejiang people have been well-known trail blazers to the world. People in different sectors from Zhejiang can be found all over China and the world.