Pan Fusheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, recently decided to set up his first academician work station in Qianzhou subdistrict, Huishan district, Wuxi.
In cooperation with Jiangsu Zhongfu Aluminum Magnesium Technology Company, Pan's project is devoted to the development of new high-end aluminium-magnesium alloys and has a total investment of 350 million yuan ($54.6 million). It will be carried out on idle land.
Qianzhou subdistrict has opened a new path for the high-quality development of township industries in South Jiangsu through investment invitations, improvement of land use efficiency and industrial transformation and upgrading.
Thanks to the advanced township industries, Qianzhou ranked among the first batch of towns with an annual GDP of over 100 million yuan ($15.4 million) in the 1980s. However, by 2015, many projects were not able to settle in the town due to its depleting land resources.
Meng Dong, secretary of the Party Working Committee of Qianzhou subdistrict, said some enterprises that had previously obtained land have been operating with outdated technologies, poor product sales, and low land productivity. He said it would be a huge asset if those lands were "vacated".
Under this situation, Zhongfu Aluminum Magnesium Technology Company was founded last year by Xu Ruifu, CEO of the company, in cooperation with the National Research Center for Magnesium Alloys. The company was built at a relatively fast pace and on 4-hectare block of land with factory buildings which had been idle for three years.
According to statistics, last year Qianzhou introduced four projects with a total value of over 100 million yuan and a total investment of 850 million yuan through making use of existing land. Since 2016, the subdistrict has revitalized 281.5 hectares of land and 236,600 square meters of factory buildings through "landless investment invitation".