NINGBO: A REGIONAL CITY LEAPFROG INTO HI-TECH DEVELOPMENT

Jon Sigurdson ()
Additional contact information
Jon Sigurdson: European Institute of Japanese Studies, Postal: Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, S-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

No 212, EIJS Working Paper Series from The European Institute of Japanese Studies

Abstract: The dynamic development in Ningbo illustrates local changes that have their basis in government support and resources from all levels of government. The rapid development arises from a combination of excellent infrastructure, a strong private entrepreneurship and strong foreign direct Investment (FDI) to exploit the geographical location which will be further enhanced when the bridge, across Hangzhou Bay to Shanghai, is completed by 2008.Ningbo, a famous port city in China, reached in 2000 a population of six million. It is situated 100 kilometres from Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, and 150 kilometres across the water from Shanghai. In terms of geo-economics Ningbo is an integral part of the dynamic Yangtze Delta region; but Ningbo is also trying to develop its own niche based on its comparative advantage. This is an important feature of China’s regional development model. Ningbo is the native place of Ningbo Bird, the forerunner in China’s, as well as a strong contender in the global, mobile handset industry. Ningbo has traditionally been a location for car component industries with early development of spark plugs and car wheels. The Geely car company has used Ningbo for its national expansion The Ningbo car components industry is expanding fuelled by support from the mould industry and a number of private supplier entrepreneurs. There are three major moulding industry centres in China. The moulding industry in Ningbo now employs about 100,000 workers. Ningbo does not want to remain only in knowledge application but in knowledge creation too. To this end Ningbo has four national-scale development zones, one hi-tech zone and 10 provincial and municipal level development zones which cater to both shipping and trade sectors; it is widely using incubators to stimulate new technologies. The Ningbo Hi-Tech Park is an important hi-tech zone in the region. jointly developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ningbo Municipal Government, it was opened in July 1999. In March 2004, the Chinese Ministry of Education approved the establishment of Ningbo-Nottingham China's first Sino-foreign university. The new university will be founded jointly by the University of Nottingham of Britain and the Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo with an investment of RMB600 million.

Keywords: Regional innovation system; local universities; industrial parks; incubators; clusters; industrial zones (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I28 L53 L62 O18 O31 O32 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-09-30, Revised 2005-09-30

Downloads: (external link)
http://swopec.hhs.se/eijswp/papers/eijswp0212.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:eijswp:0212

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EIJS Working Paper Series from The European Institute of Japanese Studies
Address: The European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Nanhee Lee ().