[photopress:zones_Tianjin.jpg,full,alignright]Tianjin has historically been a very industrial city building on its advantage of also being a port.
Tianjin has been able to leverage the foreign direct investment brought through TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area which is, in fact, five separate zones working as one) to develop the city.
There are now over 18,000 foreign invested companies within Tianjin. Tianjin is one of China’s strongest second tier cities, and being within an hour and a half of Beijing (soon to be 27 minutes by bullet train), it is becoming more and more attractive to firms who are looking to move out of Beijing for lower costs of production.
Now the economic development zone is getting towards saturation (and the traffic in Tianjin is horrendous) the new developments are happening in the new Binhai area. This has a planned area of 2,270 km², a coastline of 153 km and a resident population of 1.4 million, Tianjin New Coastal District lies in the center of the Circum-Bohai Region and the eastern seaboard of Tianjin.
[photopress:industrial_zones_new_Tainjin_coastal_area.jpg,full,alignleft]Tianjin shows how the future of a economic development zone can be supported by the government with educational institutions: there are now 37 institutions of higher learning at all levels, 159 academy of sciences and research institutes, 7 key state-level labs, 10 key ministry-level labs, 10 state-level research centers for engineering technology, 27 state-level and ministry-level testing centers, and there were over 80,000 college graduates last year and an additional 30,000 graduates of other technical schools.
Sources: All Roads Lead to China