Qingdao's marine economy has shown good developmental momentum as the city recovers from past COVID-19 outbreaks and pursues economic and social development in a well-coordinated manner that includes a series of measures to support ocean-related industry development.

Containers are unloaded at Qingdao Port in Shandong province. [Photo by Yu Fangping/For China Daily]

According to a preliminary calculation, Qingdao's gross ocean products grew 10.1 percent year-on-year to 230.41 billion yuan ($34.08 billion) in the first half of this year, accounting for 32.6 percent of the city's GDP.

Oceans are strategically important to high-quality development, and Qingdao is transforming into a leading modern marine city, with more efforts being made to speed up the construction of world-class sea ports, a well-established modern maritime industrial system, and a green and sustainable marine ecological environment.

The city has set up a special working team to stabilize the operations of the marine economy, coordinate the scheduling of marine projects, and provide services to ocean-related enterprises, so as to accelerate the high-quality development of the marine economy.

In the first half of this year, key marine industries in Qingdao continued to rise. The added value of marine shipbuilding, offshore engineering equipment manufacturing, and marine chemical industries reached 2.9 billion yuan, 7.85 billion yuan and 11.59 billion yuan, respectively, up 37.1 percent, 18 percent and 28.7 percent year-on-year.

The added value of marine medicine and biological products hit 2.82 billion yuan, up 11.3 percent year-on-year, while the added value of marine transportation reached 44.18 billion yuan, up 23.6 percent.

In the first half of this year, the container and cargo throughput of Qingdao Port reached 12.47 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) and 32.79 million metric tons, respectively, up 7 percent and 2.8 percent year-on-year.