The China-SCO Demonstration Area in Qingdao. (PHOTO: VCG)

By Staff Reporters

Since its establishment in September 2019, the China-SCO Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Area in Qingdao, east China's Shandong province, has been making efforts to deepen regional cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economies, so as to play a bigger role in global industrial and supply chains.

"We aim to make the area a key platform that gathers capital, technologies, talent, services and industrial chains to serve SCO and BRI countries and regions, and to present new scenarios and models of local economic and trade cooperation under multilateral frameworks," said Zhang Xinzhu, director of the area's administrative committee.

To cultivate more economic and trade professionals, the area has established the China-SCO Institute of Economy and Trade, which has launched 35 training sessions since 2021, with more than 4,600 persons from 95 countries participating in the training.

Moreover, it has strengthened cultural exchanges and people-to-people ties with SCO and BRI countries, and signed a memorandum of friendship and cooperation with 34 industrial parks and associations.

Businesses have greatly benefited from the construction of the demonstration area. Local products in Qingdao such as the pepper are exported abroad, becoming a new favorite in Indian and Pakistani markets.

From January to May this year, the area saw 357 China-Europe freight train trips, a year-on-year increase of 37.3 percent. The trade volume between the area and other SCO countries increased from 850 million RMB in 2019 to 4 billion RMB in 2021. Since 2020, a total of 52 projects with an investment of 176.5 billion RMB, have been registered in the area.

According to its new plan, the demonstration area will step up efforts to develop the industrial Internet. By exploring the new cooperation mode of "SCO + RCEP + BRI + Industrial Internet," it is expected to provide more solutions and standards for SCO and BRI countries and regions to digitally transform.