From January to June, Tai'an in Shandong province has achieved fruitful results in key projects, replacing traditional drivers with new ones, and implementing the protection strategy of the Yellow River, according to a symposium on development and reform held on Aug 5.

During the first half of this year, Tai'an planned 505 key projects, 329 of which have been included in the project list with an estimated total investment of 236.8 billion yuan ($35.08 billion).

During the same period, 65.5 percent of the planned investment in 321 projects at the provincial and municipal-level has been used.

In terms of traditional-new driver transformation, Tai'an has cultivated two provincial "flying geese" industrial clusters and four provincial leading companies this year. The city's investment in the "four new" (which refers to new technology, new industry, new business forms, and new models) economies and high-tech industries increased 18 percent and 30.4 percent, respectively.

In addition, Tai'an has listed 28 projects as part of the protection strategy of the Yellow River this year, ranking second in the province in terms of the number of projects.

For example, Xintai, a county-level city of Tai'an, received 41.42 million yuan from the central special budget of the Yellow River for its sewage treatment plant project.

Tai'an has also set the goal for the second half of this year. It aims to develop eight "flying geese" industrial clusters to achieve revenue exceeding 270 billion yuan.

During the year, Tai'an is aiming for the operating revenue of the eight "flying geese" industrial clusters to exceed 270 billion yuan, and for that of the 10 leading enterprises to exceed 100 billion yuan. It also seeks to form nationally-advanced manufacturing clusters.

Tai'an will steadily advance "dual carbon" work and promote new energy industrial layout. It will speed up construction on projects like China Energy Engineering Cooperation's 300MW compressed air energy storage to build the nation's "energy storage capital".