Overview of the Economy of Shandong Province 2 – Agricultural & Marine Economy
Agricultural Economy
The land area of Shandong Province is 157k km2. The main climatic feature of Shandong Province is the warm temperate semi-humid monsoon. There are all kinds of terrains including plains, swales, lakes, mountains and hills, which is definitely a natural advantage for the agricultural development in Shandong. Except the eastern coastal areas, there is significant continental climate in Shandong. Among the land areas, 770k km2 is farm land which represents 48.96% of the total land. And the garden, woodland, grassland, and waters occupy 370k km2 , accounting for 23.5% with the construction land accounting for 14.55% and the unused land accounting for 12.99%. The coastline is as long as 3300 km. The space of the offshore area is nearly the same with the land area, including the beach area of about 3000 km2.
The total economic output and agricultural output value of Shandong Province has been at the forefront of the nation. It is not only the most important product areas of cotton and oil in China, but also an important base of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. In 2004, the value of the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery output is of 345.32 billion Yuan, accounting for 22.3% of provincial GDP. In the industrial structure of agriculture, agriculture accounts for 55.1% of the total output of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, forestry accounts for 1.8%, livestock accounts for 29.3% and fisheries accounts for 12.2%.
The advantage of the agricultural industry in Shandong is that the level of mechanization is relatively high compared with other provinces in China, so that the output and working efficiency of agricultural are satisfactory not only for the famers but also for the consumers. On the other hand, the level of the industrialization is also pretty considerable. There is a batch of agricultural base in Shandong and followed by more newer ones, which facilitates the exporting of the crops to others countries.
Marine Economy
The marine industry in Shandong Province is now the most fast-developing domain. The reason is not only the predominant geographical location of Shandong but also the policy support from the Chinese government.
According to the statistics, the marine life, marine equipment manufacturing, marine energy and minerals, modern marine chemical and the deep processing of the marine aquatic products is five major domains of marine industry in the blue economic zone of Shandong Province. And in 2011, the total income of these 5 major marine industry domains is up to 550 billion Yuan with an augment of 26% compared with the statistic of last year. In the meantime, the total income of the 50 leading enterprises in the marine business is expected to reach 130 billion Yuan with an augment of 20%. Furthermore, the government is putting emphasis on the development of 500 high-tech enterprises, deep processing enterprises, and innovative SMEs with the help of the policy support.
Some coastal cities of Shandong, such as Qingdao, Yantai, etc, are the pioneers of the marine industrialization process.
These large projects, project groups are in accordance with the layout of the development trend of the industry chain, promoting the development of industry to accelerate. For now, Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay, and west coast have formed a one hundred billion Yuan marine ship engineering industry cluster. Yantai is committed to form the united system of those five major marine industries including cultivating the marine organisms, the marine equipment manufacturing, marine energy and minerals, modern ocean marine cultural tourism, marine transport and logistics industry. With a thousand million tons of petrochemicals, one million vehicles, one million kilowatts of photovoltaic cells, 500 000 LED street lights, Weifang made every effort to build the eight hundreds billion advantage industrial clusters. Along the 3345 km coastline of Shandong, competitive industries are developing rapidly in the shape of a ribbon.