????Since this year, Qingdao will accelerate to integrate the construction of The Belt and Road, strengthen exchanges and interactions with the countries along the line to gain further progress and development in economy and trade, finance, science and technology, culture, and other fields.
????In terms of providing services to talents, in the first quarter Qingdao has transacted foreigner work permits in China for 210 talents from the countries along the Belt and Road. Qingdao has successfully introduced Professor Whittman, a foreign academician from the Russian National Academy of Sciences. The innovative research and development of the “Marine Environment Concrete Technology” jointly launched by his team and the Qingdao University of Technology has been successfully selected into the Chinese “111 Introduction of Foreign Talents Project”. Qingdao also brought in a high-end team of experts composed of 5 members from Singapore and Malaysia, which helped Qingdao enterprises win the bid for Norway Semi-submersible Ocean Fishery project and will lay a solid foundation of equipment technology for the Chinese deep-sea economic development.
????In terms of economic and trade cooperation, Qingdao will push forward the construction of the commerce and trade logistics park CNQC Logistics Group invests 206 million USD in Indonesia. Improve step by step the key project pool for the Belt and Road and newly add 57 key projects ranging from infrastructure, economic, and trade cooperation and industrial investment. In the first quarter, Qingdao has put 8 investment projects on records for the countries along the line; the contractual investment amount from China has reached 950 million USD, increasing by 66.6% over the same period of time. The total import and export volume with the countries along the line has reached 61.43 billion Yuan, increasing by 26.9%.
????In terms of financial services, in the first quarter, the external guarantees balance of Qingdao enterprises has amounted to 6.76 billion USD, increasing by 48.14% over the same period of time. By means of credit enhancement by external guarantee, many “going out” enterprises including Haier and Qingdao Port have newly signed or renew financing agreements valuing 1.092 billion USD with the banks in the countries and regions along the line, which will provide enormous fund guarantee for the growth of overseas projects.
????In terms of transport interconnection, Qingdao Port and St. Petersburg Port has established friendly ties with each other and the total number of foreign ports with friendly ties has reached 20. The demonstration project of Qingdao “The Belt and Road” cross-border container multimodal transport mode by sea and road is under rapid construction. The throughput of the multimodal transport mode by sea and road has reached 158,000 TEUs, increasing by 77% over the same period of time and ranking 1st among Chinese ports.
????In addition, in the first quarter Qingdao has also introduced several world-renowned convention and exhibition activities including Asia-Europe Digital Connectivity High-level Forum, Asia Media Summit and IUMRS-ICA etc. Moreover 19 enterprises have been organized to attend 7 international exhibitions in Germany and Russia and have achieved a lot in cooperation. Shen Junlin
