Perched on the southern bank of Taihu Lake in northern Zhejiang Province, the city of Huzhou takes steady steps to build an enhanced business environment offering better services and bigger advantages

With 2,300-plus years of history, Huzhou is the only city in the Taihu Lake area named after the lake. Situated at the middle of the Yangtze River Delta, it neighbours not only Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces, but also the metropolis of Shanghai.

Huzhou, a long-time transport hub for Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing, lies just 75km from Hangzhou, 130km from Shanghai and 220km from Nanjing. It benefits from first-class transfer facilities for railways, roads and water routes. For example, it is traversed by four major expressways, 104 and 318 state highways, the Xuan-Hang Railway, the Hang-Ning Intercity Railway and the Chang-Hu-Shen waterway, the latter regarded as an Oriental Little Rhine. Definitely, Huzhou enjoys very easy access.

Economy booms

In 2013, Huzhou registered a GDP of US$29.3bn, with a GDP per capita of US$11,200, up 8.7 per cent on the previous year. Its fiscal revenue totaled US$4.4bn while local fiscal revenue stood at US$2.5bn.

Industry surges

Being listed as a key city for integration into the Shanghai-led Yangtze River Delta development boosted Huzhou’s transformation and escalated its industry. The most relevant sectors are three emerging industries (advanced equipment manufacturing, new energy and biopharmaceuticals) and three local specialties (metal materials, green-home trends and textiles/apparel).

In 2013, added-value and main business incomes for the enterprises above a designated size reached US$10.3bn and US$61.3bn respectively, up 11.3 and 13.5 per cent. Ten industrial sectors showed main business incomes and profit-and-tax amounts exceeding RMB10bn and RMB1bn respectively.

Export trade

Huzhou rides on tides of modernisation and internationalisation. Early in the 21st century, it reaped the fruits of burgeoning foreign trade. From 2000-2013, its import-export trade amounted to US$59.1bn, with exports totaling US$50.2bn, following average annual growth of 26.3 and 27.4 per cent respectively. Both figures dwarf provincial and national foreign-trade growth for the same period.

In 2013, Huzhou registered import-export trade worth US$9.5bn, up 9.3 per cent on a year earlier, with the exports at US$8.1bn, up 9.5 per cent. By now, Huzhou has established trade relations with 208 countries and regions worldwide.

During recent years, Huzhou focused on technological development and transformed into a self-innovative centre. Economies of scale, technology upgrades, standardisation and own-brand building markedly sharpened the advantages for the metallic-new-materials, green-household-appliances and specialised-textiles industries. Meanwhile, green-construction materials formed a prestigious, competitive cluster offering a highly centralised and integrated industrial chain. No wonder that Huzhou wins acclaim as China’s capital of wood and bamboo flooring.

The wood industry in Nanxun District provides Zhejiang with a pilot area for technological breakthroughs and a brand-building base for wooden products. Nanxun also is designated as the province’s wood-flooring demonstration cluster. Its wood flooring and engineered wood flooring command 60 per cent of the national market, being highly competitive at home and abroad.

Since the 1990s, Anji County has advanced dramatically to become a bamboo-flooring capital. Its annual production surpassed 2,000 square metres, capturing much of the national and global markets. To strengthen this pillar industry, devoted efforts continuously create innovative products, like engineered bamboo flooring, plastic bamboo flooring, oxygen-enriched carbonised flooring, silent flooring, sterilisation flooring, and outdoor strand bamboo flooring. New materials include strand bamboo panels, bamboo wall panels and bamboo wallpaper.

Among Huzhou’s other prominent building materials are wood panels, wall and furniture coverings, wooden doors, construction doors and windows, decorative stainless steel panels, stairs, PVC materials, outdoor construction materials and many other high-quality, environmentally friendly products.

Constantly, Huzhou aims to upgrade its products and enhance their quality. Local brands, notably 15 named provincial or municipal famous brands, like Bugs Bunny, Huazhijie, Moganshan, Shiyou and Treessun, to name a few, have gained vast international exposure.

Trade support

A government department, the Municipal Bureau of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, promotes Huzhou’s overseas trade-and-investment activities. Applying high standards of quality, conscious of public demand and seeking self-enhancement, the bureau strives to learn, innovate and provide reliable services. Furthermore, it wishes to establish an enthusiastic, clear-minded, practical, innovative, transparent and honest foreign-trade-promotion body as one more step toward creating a business environment with better services and greater advantages.

For more information, please contact:
Huzhou Municipal Bureau of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation
International Trade Plaza, 137 Fenghuang Rd
Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
Tel: 86-572-210-1418, 219-1011
Fax: 86-572-219-1012
Email: huzhou505@163.com
Web: www.hzbiz.gov.cn