Joint efforts for better Yangtze River Economic Belt

Shanghai should play a leading role in the construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, participants said yesterday at a forum co-hosted by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Nantong University and Guangming Daily.

“Shanghai, located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, should take the lead to stimulate the growth of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, which contributes nearly half of China’s economic output with only 20 percent of the country’s territory,” Hong Yinxing, chief expert with the Yangtze River Industry Development Economic Institution, said at the forum.

The Yangtze River Economic Belt, which stretches from Sichuan Province to Shanghai, covers a batch of fast-growing cities like Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanchang and Nanjing. More than 40 percent of China’s population lives in this area.

“With China’s coordinated development strategy, cities along the Yangtze River Economic Belt have seen narrowed growth gap,” said Cheng Changchun, a professor with Nantong University. “It paves way for closer cooperation among cities within the area.”

Cheng added that both China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the call to further enhance the country’s reform and opening up serve as catalysts for a more prosperous region.

To offer suggestions, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences published a set of books to study how the Yangtze River Economic Belt should interact with the construction of free trade zones in the area, its ecological development, the industry cluster and the development of an even convenient traffic system.