From rust-belt to green-belt, Heilongjiang’s economy has turned around

The regional economy in Heilongjiang Province has been given a substantial boost in recent years thanks to plans that helped to make better use of the region’s potential.

The impetus for the new plans came from a meeting between President Xi Jinping and local officials during the Two Sessions meetings in 2016. After meeting with President Xi, the provincial government decided to focus its efforts in two overarching areas.

The first is the tourism industry. Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, is well known for its annual ice festival. But the provincial government wanted to further capitalize on the region’s attractiveness as a winter holiday destination, and so in 2017 launched a new plan to further develop the local tourism industry.

Since the plan was launched, winter activities including fishing, hot spring, and driving on ice were rolled out for visitors during last year’s Spring Festival vacation, and many new winter resorts have opened. “I think the biggest change in the province is that the winter tourism industry has made a step forward, which has given a boost to the local economy,” said Hou Wei, the deputy director of the Department of Culture and Tourism in Heilongjiang Province.

The second area of focus for provincial officials was improving the use of technology in agriculture. Since 2016, a total of 6,600 hectares of sustainable rice paddies have been built by a local cooperative in Huanan County. The cooperative said it’s looking forward to improving its capacity to undertake more value-added processing of agriculture products with help of new technology. And substantial progresses has been made in the local animal husbandry sector, with around 207,000 cooperatives incorporating 8.6 million hectares of fields and 3.4 million farmers being established.

“Technology has contributed to 67.1 percent of the province’s agriculture development, which is up 3 percent on last year,” said Li Shirun, the deputy director of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Department in Heilongjiang Province.

As part of China’s industrial rust belt, many local state-owned enterprises were in an economic slump. But the push for reform over the past couple of years has turned their fate around. “The mindset has changed, and ideas about development have changed,” said Xu Shaotang, a manager at a local state-owned enterprise. “We have introduced new talent to our company and strengthened the ability of management.”