Yantai, a coastal city in East China's Shandong province [Photo/yantaifabu]

The coastal city of Yantai has set goals to develop its marine economy in next five years. By 2025, the city's total output in marine economy is expected to reach 250 billion yuan ($38.4 billion), local media reported.

Yantai will ramp up efforts to bolster its marine industry system to facilitate its high-quality development. According to the plan, a total of 60 marine ranching demonstration zones at or above the provincial level will be built by 2025.

The city will focus on cultivating marine equipment manufacturing industry to improve technological innovation and accelerating the construction of an industrial chain cluster for marine equipment manufacturing.

More efforts will be made to promote the integration of marine ranches with cultural tourism and the breeding of aquatics. Moreover, intelligent technologies will be applied to marine ranches, including 5G communications, artificial intelligence, and internet of things.

During the next five years, Yantai will promote the large-scale development of seawater desalination and comprehensive utilization industries. The total scale of seawater desalination is expected to reach more than 500,000 tons per day by 2025.

A plan focusing on the protection of the marine ecological environment in areas such as bays, islands, shorelines, estuaries and wetlands will also be launched during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).

Yantai will accelerate the construction of its ports and build the city into an important hub in the national comprehensive transport system. By 2025, the total cargo throughput of the city's ports will exceed 500 million tons and container throughput will exceed 4 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).