Ningxia, which is neither bordered nor adjacent to the sea, breaks out into a new track for opening up丨Vibrant China Research

Recently, a briefing session on the theme interview activities of the “Vibrant China Research Tour” Ningxia Station was held in Yinchuan. Groups of eye-catching data and pragmatic achievements panoramically demonstrate Ningxia’s vivid practice of building a high-level inland open economic pilot zone. Geography has boundaries, but openness has no boundaries. As an important fulcrum of the “One Belt and One Road” initiative and an important window for my country’s opening to the west, Ningxia relies on its unique location endowment and high-level cooperation platform to continue to open up internal and external channels and steadily achieve a profound transformation from an inland hinterland to an open frontier.

The open economy has strong momentum and a gratifying growth rate.From January to August this year, Ningxia’s total foreign trade import and export value was 17.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.9%. The growth rate was 6.3 percentage points higher than the national average, ranking ninth in the country. The market layout continues to expand, with imports and exports to Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia increasing by 72.1%, 50.8%, and 81.7% respectively, and more than 40 specialty products have been exported overseas for the first time. The vitality of foreign trade entities has increased, the trade structure has continued to be optimized, and the growth potential of inland areas opening to the west has been accelerated.

High-energy platforms gather resources and enable cooperation.Ningxia continues to make good use of the China-Arab States Expo’s national-level opening platform, deepen the “China-Arab States co-organized, ministry-region jointly organized” mechanism, and promote the implementation of the exhibition signing results into solid industrial projects and economic and trade increments. Among them, the seventh expo achieved full coverage of 22 Arab countries, 31 provinces (cities, districts) across the country, and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, building a core bridge for economic and trade exchanges, industrial docking, and people-to-people connections between China and Arab countries.

Three-dimensional open passages extend in all directions, from rivers to seas.In response to the location shortcoming of “not along the border and not close to the sea”, Ningxia has accelerated the construction of a three-dimensional opening pattern of “eastern connection, westward expansion, southward expansion, northward expansion + aerial Silk Road” to completely break the inland location constraints. Channels connect the four seas, platforms build bridges, and inland areas can also become frontiers. Linking coastal ports to the east, laying out inland waterless ports, and operating “one-way” trains for rail-sea intermodal transport on a regular basis; deeply integrating into the New Western Land-Sea Corridor to the south, reaching Southeast Asian markets such as Laos and Vietnam; stably operating Central Asian trains to the west to achieve zero breakthrough in TIR international road transportation; opening up Russian resource import channels to the north; relying on the Yinchuan Hedong International Airport to encrypt the route network to build a regional aviation hub.

Scientific and technological exchanges continue to deepen, and practical cooperation expands in depth.Ningxia has held six consecutive China-UAE technology transfer and innovation cooperation exchange conferences and three high-tech and equipment exhibitions, attracting a total of more than 3,000 Chinese and foreign guests to participate in the conferences and exchanges. Focusing on advantageous areas such as clean energy, green agriculture, desertification control, and artificial intelligence, more than 1,300 advanced and applicable technological achievements were released, and 109 scientific and technological cooperation agreements were implemented. Relying on the China-Arab comprehensive information service platform, scientific and technological cooperation will lay a solid foundation for China-Arab all-round cooperation.