Qingdao Port [Photo/Guanhai News]

Qingdao city in Shandong province has been ramping up efforts to boost its modern logistics industry and provide support to the construction of a socialist modern international metropolis.

In the first quarter of this year, the added value of the city's logistics industry reached 44 billion yuan ($6.32 billion), up 6.3 percent year-on-year, accounting for 12.5 percent of its GDP. The growth rate of the transportation, warehousing and postal industries in the first quarter was higher than the provincial average.

Qingdao has been building a high-quality international logistics network by focusing on the core transport network of sea, air, road and rail. From January to April, the city added three inland ports in the Yellow River Basin, two sea-rail intermodal routes and two international cargo flights to New York in the United States and Toronto in Canada. 

The multimodal transport center in the China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Area [Photo/Guanhai News]

The number of China-Europe freight train routes operated by a multimodal transport center in the China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Area, or SCODA, currently stands to 30 and covers 23 countries and 54 cities involved in the Belt and Road Initiative and SCO member nations. 

The city is also striving to attract investments, construct key projects and expand industrial scale. Its efforts include strengthening the strategic cooperation between China Logistics Group and the Qingdao government, and holding an array of investment promotion activities. Qingdao has also accelerated 12 key projects in modern logistics that have a total investment of more than 700 million yuan.

Qingdao has cultivated a batch of core logistics enterprises such as RRS Supply Chain Technology Co Ltd and China Master Logistics Co Ltd, both of which are among the top 50 Chinese logistics enterprises. As of April, the total number of national A-level logistics enterprises in Qingdao was 108.

A series of targeted policies have been rolled out to support the development of the aviation industry and promote the high-quality development of the shipping industry. Qingdao has also implemented a transportation and logistics special refinancing policy to help more than 575 small and medium-sized enterprises attain financing totaling 1.16 billion yuan.  

This year, Qingdao will build more than 10 international container shipping routes and the sea-rail intermodal volume is expected to reach 1.95 million twenty-foot equivalent units. Fixed-asset investment in transportation is set to hit 27.3 billion yuan.