Wuxi aims to achieve win-win in environment and economic growth

Yang Weize, Party Secretary of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, East China has said that Wuxi aims to achieve a win-win situation between environment and economic growth.

"The Taihu Lake Blue Algae outbreak two years ago taught us a good lesson. Swedish sustainable development model is a good experience that we can learn. Thus we like to shift from the traditional metallurgical and mechanical industries to more environmentally friendly industries as we encounter the environmental problems now," Yang made the remark at the one-day Wuxi-Sweden Cleantech Symposium which was held in Stockholm on Monday.

Yang said Wuxi has 12 thousand foreign enterprises which accounts for 4.5% of the total foreign investment in China. Wuxi has great advantage in attracting foreign investment.

"Now the distance between Wuxi and Shanghai is one hour, in the future, the time of travel between the two cities will be shortened to 25 minutes, which means Wuxi will be integrated into Shanghai, as it is even shorter than that between Shanghai's old city center and Pudong new development zone," said Yang.

Yang noted that since 2004, high-tech industries has developed very fast, accounting for 43.5% in 2008 of the total economic, compared with that of 30% in 2004.

"The reduction of COD reached 25% and chemical pollutants discharge rate reduced by 28%, which were the highest level of reduction in China while our GDP growth still achieved 14%," said Yang.

Yang believed that Sweden's cleantech and sustainable designing technology can help Wuxi to achieve its goal.

"80% of our projects from Europe came from Sweden. In addition to green technology, we also welcome other high tech industries to come to Wuxi. We have allocated special areas for high-tech industries," Secretary Yang told reporters.

Ni Bin, Wuxi's assistant Mayor said that a Sino-Swedish sustainable city is planned to be built in Wuxi's New District as one of the examples to build the ‘green' city.

"The eco-city will cover an area of 31.5 hectares of land with an investment of 5.9 million US dollars mainly from the local government. It will be the first of its kind in China and can be copied in other parts of Jiangsu as well as China, " said Ni.

During the symposium, three agreements for further cooperation have been signed between Wuxi New District and three companies in Sweden, namely, Astra Zeneca, a pharmaceutical company Atlas Coproco, a compressor company and Sandvik, a mining machinery company.

Lars Andreasson, State Secretary and Asian Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden said he was impressed by the efforts by the local government in Wuxi.

"During my 7 years working in Shanghai, I only heard one problem out of the 150 to 200 projects in Wuxi. It shows the great support from the local government ," said Andreasson.

Anders Buren from Astra Zeneca said his company in Wuxi achieved average growth rate of 30% since 2001 and has expanded twice its production scale to meet the demand in China.

"Atlas Copco's scale of compressor production doubled in every three years since 1984. Now 30% of our products are exported to other Asian countries. This is achieved with the cooperation and great support of the local government. I like to say thank you," said Paul Fringe from Atlas Copco.
Wuxi is the 7th most competitive city in China. With a population of 6 million, Wuxi has achieved per capita GDP of 10 thousand US dollars in 2008.

The city officials are also negotiating with the Swedish Shanghai Expo Committee to have the post-Expo Pavilion designed by Sweco move to Wuxi's New District.

Swedish side has thought of making the Pavilion movable so that they can rebuild it somewhere else in China and don't have to transport everything back to Sweden after the Shanghai Expo next year.

By Xuefei Chen, People's Daily Online, Stockholm.