The Ningbo National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, northeast of the city center and to the west of the Beilun District and the Ningbo port, is moving Ningbo from a single export-oriented model to that of a more comprehensive economy.
NBHTZ, which covers an area of 18.9 square kilometers, was created in 1999 and upgraded to a state level zone in January 2007.
Currently there are almost 600 enterprises in the zone.
The Ningbo Research and Development Park is still under construction but will be totally completed by the end of next year. It will have some 150 private and public research and development institutes. Plus college facilities such as the Zhejiang University National Science Park which is located in NBRDP and the Ningbo University which neighbors NBHTZ plus other public institutes and several technical services.
So there is already a strong pool of high tech organizations in several high tech sectors.
The result is a financially successful zone — GDP of the zone last year was RMB 4.5 billion – which has available a highly qualified technical workforce.
For communication NBHTZ is quite close to the city’s center; Lishe Airport is only 10 kilometers away; it is linked to the south with the Hangzhou-Ningbo expressway and connected to the north by the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.
These high tech developments are absolutely in line with the government’s stated intention of moving manufacturing up several notches to more high-tech, value added, goods.
Source: China Briefing News
