LOCATION
Binzhou city is located in northern Shandong Province, the hinterland of the Yellow River Delta, and the southwestern coast of the Bohai Gulf. Located at the juncture of the economic area around the Bohai Sea and the economic area along the Yellow River, Binzhou represents the intersection of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Shandong Peninsular Economic Development Regions. The Yellow River flows across the city, and Binzhou serves as the North Gate of Shandong Province and as the Bridgehead linking to the Binhai New Area in Tianjin. With a total area of 9,600 square kilometers, Binzhou provides home to 3.73 million people. Binzhou exercises jurisdiction over one district, six counties, Binzhou Economic Development Zone, Binzhou Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone and Beihai New Area. It is the largest and most populated administrative area at the Yellow River Delta Efficient Eco-economic Zone.
CULTURE
Early at the Neolithic Age, people began to live and work on this piece of land. It is the birth place of the origin of the Yellow River Culture and the Qi Culture. Binzhou is a remarkable place producing many outstanding people in history. Sun Wu, the ancient Chinese military strategist, Fan Zhongyan, the great statesman and writer in Song Dynasty, and Dong Yong, the famous filial son in the Han Dynasty were born, grew up or once worked here. There are abundant human and historic relics and natural sceneries in Binzhou such as the Sun Tzu’s Art of War City, the Manor of Wei’s Clan, the Fangong Temple, the Zhangba Buddha and the Mada Lake. Binzhou is also famous for its unique and diversified folk arts, like paper-cutting, Huji Story-telling Festival, Dong Yong’s legend, Bo Xing Lv Opera, all of which have been selected as the national non-material culture heritages.
RESOURCES
Binzhou covers a vast area and has rich land resources. 170,000 hectares of land remains to be reclaimed. With its coastline of 240 kilometers, 100,000 hectares of mud flat and reed wet land and 230,000 hectares of -10m shallow sea areas, Binzhou is one of the China’s regions with tremendous potential for development. In Binzhou, the presence of 29 kinds of mineral resources has been verified. Binzhou abounds in rich reserve of oil (600 million tons) and natural gas (16.4 billion cubic meters) and the city is the major oil recovery area of the Shengli Oilfield, the second largest oilfield in China. The 460 million tons of underground brine reserves make the city an important production base for raw salt, salt chemicals, and maritime cultivation within Shandong Province. The Yellow River runs across the city for 94 kilometers, providing sufficient water supply of a single storage capacity of 800 million cubic meters.
URBAN CONSTRUCTION
The total city planning area is 176 square kilometers, 78 square kilometers of which has been completed, with an urban population of 660,000. The crisscross transportation network of expressways, railways and seaports makes Binzhou a city as a state hub for communication. The City has won the titles of National Hygiene City, the Charm City with Chinese Characteristics, the Demonstration City for Water and Soil Conservation in China, and the National Outstanding City for Tourism.
ECONOMY
Binzhou has built up its unique modern agricultural industrial system, focusing on the production of grain & cotton, fruit, vegetables, livestock and aquiculture. It is the main national production bases for grain and cotton and the place of origin for Chinese winter dates. Now Binzhou has a group of industries, such as textiles and garment sewing; oil and salt chemicals; deep processing of grain, vegetables and food; advanced equipment manufacturing; biology engineering and medical equipment. Weiqiao Pioneering Group (textile), Befar Chemicals, Lubei Chemical Group, Xiwang Group(glucose), Yaguang(towel)and Movever(piston)are large size enterprises in Binzhou, whose main business revenue exceeds 10 billion RMB. These enterprises all rank at the forefront nationwide or even worldwide at their related business circles. Eleven enterprises in the city have been listed both home and abroad. The tertiary industry in logistics, trade, tourism and financing developed rapidly, taking 31.56% against agriculture(10.06%)and industry (58.38%) in 2009. Last year the local fiscal revenue totaled 15.1 billion RMB, above-scale industrial added-value 76.35 billion RMB, personal disposable income for urban residence 17,500 RMB and net income per capita for rural residence 6,245 RMB. Zouping County and Bo Xing County in the city are among the Top 100 Counties in Economic Strength.
SOCIAL UNDERTAKINGS
There has been a sound and fast development in the city’s education and healthcare. So far Binzhou has 3 universities, 16 vocational schools, 65 hospitals and 459 medical institutions at various levels. Great achievements have been made in the sports field, and last year the athletes from Binzhou won 2, 9 and 50 gold medals in world, national and provincial games respectively. There are also 1000 sports clubs or associations. As an advanced city for science and technology progress, Binzhou City has attached great importance to the scientific and technological innovations, and so far it has 3 business technique centers at national level, 13 Hi-tech enterprises and one provincial key laboratory.
FOREIGN EXCHANGES
Binzhou City has twined sister city relationships with Gaoyang City in South Korea and Kinokawa City in Japan. It has also secured business and trading cooperative relationships with more than 60 countries or regions, and there are about 600 foreign invested companies in the city. Many of the world-known enterprises, like Japan Itochu, Germany BBS, Thailand Banpu and Austria Diamond Aircraft, have business investment in Binzhou.
