Shandong province has been ramping up efforts to foster new economic growth drivers, restructure industries and stimulate productivity, according to local officials.

The province became the first comprehensive pilot zone in China to replace old economic growth drivers with new ones in January 2018. After more than two years of development, this has yielded economic results.

According to local authorities, its economic structure has been significantly improved. The share of the output value of high-tech industries within the total industrial output rose by 6.3 percentage points from 2017 and reached 44.4 percent in the first half of this year. Meanwhile, the contribution of the service sector to economic growth rose from 57.6 percent in 2017 to 78.2 percent in 2019.

The share of the "Four New Economy" (new technology, new business pattern, new development model, and new industry) rose from 21.7 percent in 2017 to 28 percent in 2019, and will exceed 30 percent this year.

The province had 2,329 applications filed in 2019 via WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty System, 1.32 times that of 2017. The number of high-tech enterprises has doubled to 11,000.

In 2019, the number of market entities in the province exceeded 10 million, an increase of 46 percent over the past three years.

In the first half of this year, despite the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, 389,000 enterprises were newly registered, including 320,000 private enterprises, up 14.5 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively.

In 2019, the added value of the five major industries - new-generation information technology, high-end equipment, new energy and new materials, high-end chemical industry and modern finance - accounted for about 14 percent of the province's GDP.