The coastal city of Yantai in East China's Shandong province will speed up the construction of the Haiyang Oriental Aerospace Port, and the satellite internet industrial park in the next five years, in a bid to build itself into a hub for the commercial aerospace industry, according to a report released at the 14th congress of the Yantai Municipal Congress of the Communist Party of China on Feb 18.

The report also noted that the city's Haiyang and Yantai Hi-tech Zone should focus on the development of aerospace industry. The aerospace industrial cluster in Haiyang was listed in the second batch of 13 Shandong provincial-level strategic emerging industrial clusters on March 22, which will inject new vitality into Yantai's aerospace industry.

Due to its favorable geographical location, Haiyang is China's fifth rocket launch site and the country's only homeport for seaborne rocket launches. On June 5, 2019, China successfully launched a Long March-11 rocket from a mobile launch platform in the Yellow Sea off Shandong province, and since then, Haiyang's aerospace industry has entered a new development phase, which has become a new calling card for Haiyang.

"We will seize the great opportunity to build Haiyang into a highland for the commercial aerospace industry, and a pilot area for replacing old growth drivers with new ones," said Liu Haibin, Party secretary of Haiyang.

Yantai Hi-tech Zone has also become a main driving force for promoting the city's aerospace industry. It has released an array of supportive measures for accelerating the development of satellite research and applications to bolster the city's satellite and application industries. The 14 measures focus on the satellite industry, satellite application, and developing public platforms.

The zone will continue to make breakthroughs in the satellite internet industry to foster a comprehensive ecosystem for the commercial space industry.