Technicians work on a production line at a machine tool manufacturing plant in Zaozhuang. [Photo providede to China Daily]

Zaozhuang has vowed to push forward with the construction of key projects to support Shandong province's efforts to replace old economic development drivers with new ones.

This year, the city will continue to strengthen the construction of six key sectors - high-end manufacturing, high-end chemical industry, big data, lithium battery, optical fiber and medical health - to support backbone industrial clusters in the area.

The equipment manufacturing industry was the first industrial cluster with 100 billion yuan ($14.89 billion) scale nurtured by Zaozhuang.

At the Mozi research and development incubation manufacturing base in Tengzhou, a research team led by Beihang University have managed to improve efficiency in the production of rotor blades for aero-engines.

They have developed new machinery and equipment that can produce up to 1 million rotor blades annually, creating a sales revenue of 4.2 billion yuan.

The development of the machine tool industry in Zaozhuang started in the 1950s. After more than 60 years' development, all kinds of manufacturing plants in the city are capable of producing more than 200,000 sets of various types of machine tools annually. The local industry has a more than 80 percent market share domestically.

The machine tool industry clusters and the complete industrial chain have attracted a number of enterprises and institutions with good market performance, and the number is still growing, said Zhang Lei, a manager at Tengzhou Mozi research and development incubation manufacturing base.

At present, the number of enterprises involved in the equipment manufacturing industry in Zaozhuang exceeds 2,000 and its main business income has reached 100 billion yuan.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, industrial internet and internet of things, the big data industry has also ushered in new development in Zaozhuang.

With investment of 3 billion yuan, the first phase of Lu'nan Big Data Center has been completed and put into operation.

Fiber optic communications is another industry in Zaozhuang. Last year, a fiber-drawing project under the cooperation of Shandong Zhiguang Communications and FiberHome Telecommunication Technologies in Wuhan was launched in the city.

The project involved a total investment of 1.8 billion yuan and is capable of producing an annual output of 3 billion yuan. It was completed and put into operation in the same year.