An underestimated small city in the middle of the country, its per capita GDP is actually the first

Qin Shuo's circle of friends

2024-04-10 12:21Posted in Shanghai Finance and Economics Creator

To be honest, I've heard of Yichang, but I'm limited to the name, and I didn't even know that the famous Three Gorges Dam was in Yichang.

There are several cities named after "Yi", Yichang, Yichun, Yibin, and some county-level cities, such as Yixing and Yicheng, but none of them are well-known big cities.

I have written about Yibin, Sichuan Province before, and I was deeply shocked by the momentum of Yibin's development in recent years.

When I started researching Yichang, I realized that it is also a seriously underrated city.

Yichang, a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Hubei Province and a provincial sub-central city, is located at the junction of the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the southwest of Hubei Province.

As a city along the Yangtze River, Yichang has 232 kilometers of Yangtze River trunk line, accounting for nearly a quarter of the province's Yangtze River runoff mileage, and is located in the second and third tier transition zone of the mainland, Yichang is extremely rich in hydropower resources, including the Three Gorges, Gezhouba, including 468 hydropower stations, with a total installed capacity of 28.5 million kilowatts, with 0.2% of the land area, equipped with 7% of the country's installed hydropower capacity, the highest year (2020) power generation of more than 140 billion kilowatt hours, accounting for 1/10 of the country's hydropower generation, known as " Hydropower Capital of the World".

In addition, Yichang is also the largest phosphate rock base in the Yangtze River Basin, with reserves of 4.317 billion tons, accounting for 56% of the province and 15% of the country, ranking first among the eight phosphate mining areas in the country, and is an important phosphate base.

In recent years, Yichang has also begun to emerge in the arena of regional economic competition. In 2023, Yichang's gross domestic product (GDP) will increase by 7.1%, ranking second in the province, with a total amount of 575.635 billion yuan, ranking second among central non-provincial capital cities, and ranking among the top 50 in terms of GDP in the country for the first time, ranking 49th.

From 54th in the country in 2021, to 52nd in 2022, and then to 49th last year, Yichang's economy has shown a steady upward trend.

In two years, Yichang has overtaken Zhangzhou in Fujian, Jining in Shandong, Luoyang in Henan, and the three provincial capitals of Nanning, Taiyuan and Harbin.

In Hubei Province, although it is still ranked third, the gap with the second place Xiangyang has also narrowed from 3 to 40 billion yuan in previous years to 9 billion yuan.

If the development trend in recent years continues, in 2024, Yichang will most likely catch up with Xiangyang and become the second city in Hubei and the first in the central non-provincial capital.

One indicator that surprised me even more is that Yichang's per capita GDP in 2023 will be as high as 147,000 yuan, surpassing Wuhan in the province and ranking first, and ranking first among more than 80 cities in the six central provinces.

Of course, in this indicator, the small population becomes a big advantage. At the end of 2022, Yichang had a permanent population of 3.92 million and a registered population of 3.8654 million. The permanent population exceeded the registered population, and Yichang became the only city in Hubei Province with a net inflow of population outside of Wuhan.

With 6.71% of the province's population, Yichang has created 10.31% of the province's GDP, which also means that Yichang's economic development efficiency is relatively high. In the "China Big Cities and Strong Cities Index Report 2022" jointly released by the China Development Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Sohu City, Yichang's strong city index ranked 34th in the country, exceeding its total GDP ranking by 20 places.

Combing the rise of Yichang in recent years, the author sees a vivid story of the rejuvenation of traditional industries and the catch-up of emerging industries.

As the largest phosphate rock base in the Yangtze River Basin, Yichang's first industry with an output value of more than 100 billion yuan is a chemical industry dominated by phosphorus chemical industry. This pillar industry once contributed nearly one-third of Yichang's industrial output value and nearly one-third of Hubei Province's chemical output value, creating a large number of tax revenue and employment opportunities.

However, the extensive and disorderly development of "igniting fires in villages and smoking everywhere" once made Yichang fall into the environmental dilemma of "chemical encirclement of the river".

At its peak in 2016, there were more than 130 chemical companies and more than 1,020 kilometers of chemical pipelines along the more than 200-kilometer shoreline of the Yichang section of the Yangtze River, and the nearest chemical company was less than 100 meters away from the Yangtze River.

The sewage of the factory is cross-flowing, the wharf is full of sand and dust, and the river water pollution is aggravated...... Extensive development that destroys the ecology is obviously unsustainable.

In 2017, Yichang decided to turn inward and start with the "food industry", promote the "customs reform and relocation" of 134 chemical enterprises along the Yangtze River, realize the "zero" of chemical enterprises within one kilometer along the Yangtze River, and also promote the city's chemical industry to shift to green, low-carbon and high-quality development.

In the year of the change, Yichang's economic growth rate fell sharply to 2.4%, ranking at the bottom of the 13 cities and prefectures in Hubei. In the face of pessimistic economic forecasts, Yichang did not flinch and continued to resolutely reverse the status quo of extensive development.

The conversion of old and new kinetic energy is not a simple physical displacement, but also requires the optimization and upgrading of the overall layout. At the beginning of 2018, Yichang issued a green development plan for the chemical industry, implemented classified rectification of more than 10 existing chemical parks, and built two 100-billion-level environmental protection chemical parks on the north and south banks of the Yangtze River - Yidu Chemical Park and Zhijiang Yaojiagang Chemical Park.

After surviving the three-year painful period of transformation, Yichang's chemical industry has successfully achieved a "V-shaped reversal", the proportion of fine chemicals in the chemical industry has increased from 18.6% before the rectification to more than 40%, and the profits and taxes of the chemical industry have increased by more than 10% for two consecutive years.

In 2022, Yichang's green chemical industry chain will achieve a total industrial output value of 150.25 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.1%, becoming the first industry in Yichang with an output value of more than 150 billion yuan.

At the same time, the water quality of the Yichang section of the main stream of the Yangtze River has reached the Class II standard, and the total phosphorus concentration in the outbound section has decreased by nearly 60% compared with five years ago. The finless porpoise, the "index organism" of the Yangtze River ecological environment, has grown from a "rare guest" to a "permanent resident" in the Yichang section of the Yangtze River.

When the traditional chemical industry "leaves the river", Yichang relies on the advantages of "phosphorus" to promote the "three-level iteration" of phosphate rock, new energy materials, powertrain and high-end equipment manufacturing, and plans to build a world-class power battery industry cluster and core base.

In December 2021, power battery giant CATL settled in Yichang, and the CATL Brunp integrated new energy industry project with an investment of 32 billion yuan started in Yichang High-tech Zone. After the first and second phases are completed and put into production, they can provide battery cathode materials for 4 million new energy vehicles.

As the largest investment project, social investment project and industrial project in Yichang's history, the Brunp project took only 52 days from signing to starting, and only 300 days from start-up to trial production, refreshing the "Yichang speed" of major project construction.

The settlement of leading enterprises has formed a strong driving effect, and a number of new energy battery head enterprises such as Xinwangda, Haike New Energy, and Chuneng New Energy have settled in.

At present, Yichang has 63 new energy battery and material projects under construction or planned to be built with a total investment of more than 300 billion yuan, and a new energy battery production capacity of 70GWh, which has basically formed a closed loop of the new energy battery industry chain covering positive and negative electrode materials, electrolytes and separators.

In the "Yichang Clean Energy Capital Plan" issued in October last year, Yichang proposed that by 2025, the city's lithium iron phosphate power battery, energy storage battery and system production capacity will reach more than 200GWh, introduce and cultivate 8~10 leading enterprises with an output value of more than 10 billion yuan, and the scale of the upstream and downstream industries of the new energy battery industry chain will exceed 200 billion yuan.

With the support of a series of national strategies, the development of Yichang is ushering in unprecedented historical opportunities and a broad stage.

The favor of the times is important, but Yichang's own enterprising spirit and action are more valuable.

In terms of large-scale projects, in 2023, Yichang will start an average of 4 projects of more than 100 million yuan per day, complete 3 projects of more than 100 million yuan every two days, settle 1 investment project of 5 billion yuan every two weeks, and settle 1 investment project of 10 billion yuan per month.

In terms of optimizing the business environment, Yichang will use "three medals" to tell us the answer in 2023.

The first is that in the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce's "Ten Thousand Private Enterprises Evaluation of Business Environment", Yichang ranks fourth among prefecture-level cities in the country, which is the vote of representatives of private enterprises across the country;

The second is to be awarded the benchmark city for the construction of Hubei business environment for four consecutive years, which is the result of the comprehensive evaluation of the province's third-party institutions;

The third is that in the past three years, the proportion of follow-up investment in investment projects has reached a quarter, and the phenomenon of "second and third phases" of rolling investment has been emerging, which is a "vote of confidence" cast by enterprises investing in Yichang with real money.

There is another point that I think other cities should learn from, that is, to subtract from industrial development and focus energy and resources on areas with comparative advantages.

In the past three years, Yichang has focused on the development of industrial chains from 28 to 12, and now focuses on the development of "3+2" leading industries, namely modern chemical and new materials, life and health, new energy and high-end equipment, big data and computing economy.

A city can't take into account too many industries, instead of "casting a wide net", it is better to start from itself, find the "small incision", and deeply cultivate the industries with comparative advantages to achieve differentiated development.

No, based on the advantages of its abundant hydropower resources, Yichang is seizing the opportunities of the times and competing for the most cutting-edge big data and computing power economy.

With the completion and operation of the first phase of the National Advanced Computing Industry Innovation (Yichang) Center and the Three Gorges Digital Intelligence Industrial Park, Yichang has signed a contract to build supercomputing and intelligent computing with a total scale of 1980P, and the largest computing power cluster in the province is rising.

In 2023, Yichang's economic output value of big data and computing power will exceed 50 billion yuan, 70 billion yuan in 2024, and 100 billion yuan in 2025, becoming another 100-billion-level emerging industry in Yichang.

Hundreds of billions of new industries continue to emerge, rejuvenating Yichang's industrial structure, and injecting a steady stream of surging momentum into this vibrant city along the Yangtze River.

No.5723 Original first article|Author Sifang-kun

References: Ma Zejiang, Mayor of Yichang City: Regional Competition is Like Sailing Against the Current, Zhai Xingli, Ji Zilast, Southern Weekly, From "Chemical Rust Belt" to "Ecological Green Belt", Hubei Yichang Cracks the Dilemma of "Chemical Siege of the River", Liu Qian, Company E, Yichang: From a Resource-based City to an Industrial Strong City, 21st Century Business Herald, Hubei Yichang Builds a Clean Energy Capital, Dong Qingsen, Liu Jie, Economic Daily.

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