A livestreamer promotes hanfu from an outlet in Caoxian county, Shandong province. ZHAO RUIXUE/CHINA DAILY

Shandong province in East China will take steps to enhance the high-quality development of the county-level economy in the province.

"Shandong's county-level economy has a solid foundation and great potential, and is consistently ranked among the top in the country," said Zhao Feng, deputy director of Shandong Development and Reform Commission, at a recent news conference. "However, there are still problems such as imbalanced and insufficient development, and a lack of vitality and endogenous power."

As the role of county economies becomes increasingly important in driving China's modernization, the need to strengthen policy support, enhance dynamism, and continuously promote high-quality development becomes more urgent, Zhao said.

Shandong is focusing on industrial digitization and working to gradually promote the digital transformation of industry clusters for small and medium-sized enterprises. Through the advantages and existing layout of Shandong's industrial internet, the province plans to create an "industrial internet + industrial parks" model to facilitate the practical application of industrial internet in industrial parks.

In addition, Shandong will leverage the leading role of major counties like Jiaozhou, Longkou, Rongcheng, Zoucheng and Shouguang to support a number of counties with strong foundations and potential and accelerate their transformation and upgrading to create more economically powerful counties with national influence.

Shandong will also implement financial subsidy policies to support a new round of high-level technological transformation, structural adjustment in high energy-consuming industries, and accelerated development of high-quality service industries to expedite the construction of a modern county-level industrial system, officials said.