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JingzhouJingzhou is situated in the mid-south of Hubei province, with Wuhan to its east and the Three Gorges Dam to the west. The municipal area contains 6.4m people, while the population of the city itself is 638,000. It is Hubei’s second largest city in terms of area and population, after the provincial capital Wuhan.
Situated amid a dense network of waterways and lakes, Jingzhou has been a transportation and distribution centre since ancient times. It has also been a place of strategic military importance and the site of many battles. The city has one of the best-preserved ancient city walls in China.
The Yangtze flooded the city many times in its history, and so no industries were built along its riverbank – a fact that Jingzhou is now looking to remedy. The Three Gorges Dam, scheduled to begin full operation in 2009, is expected to bring a lasting solution to the problem.
Today’s Jingzhou lacks the dynamism of its richer neighbour, Yichang. One of the reasons for this is a lack of political and administrative continuity. Jingzhou is often regarded as a stepping-stone to higher office, which means that new mayors seldom have time to follow through with their plans for the city. Occasional interruptions in electricity supply and the quality of the labour force are additional problems for companies operating in the city.
Important local industries include textiles, light industry, chemicals, machinery, foodstuffs, auto parts, metallurgy and electrical appliances. Jingzhou is also famous for producing rice, cotton and fish, and it is home to one of China’s national reserve grain warehouses.
Established in 1988, Tianfa Group was a conglomerate involved mainly in finished oil products and liquefied petroleum gas. It later moved into other sectors, such as agricultural by-products and paper-making, but has run into serious difficulties in recent years. Its founder Gong Jialong was arrested in 2006 on suspicion of financial irregularities and corruption. Jingzhou city government then took over Tianfa and initiated a restructuring to allow the company to deal with its financial troubles and to bring in strategic investors.
Remy International, the US-based manufacturer of electrical components, diesel engines and power systems, operates an alternator plant that supplies major domestic car-makers in China. Philips runs a plant in Jingzhou with an annual output of 80m units of standard auto lighting equipment, the largest plant of its kind in Asia.
The Hubei-based China Automotive Systems Inc operates a subsidiary in the city, known as Jingzhou Henglong Automotive Parts. It supplies power steering systems for Volkswagen’s Jetta and Audi vehicles.
The US-based Cooper Standard Automotive has a joint venture in Jingzhou New & High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, as does Reckitt Benckiser of Germany, engaged mainly in the production of daily household chemical products. This provincial-level zone is located in the eastern part of the city, just 1km from the port and connected with National Highways 207 and 318.
Opened in 2005, the Jingzhou Yangtze River Highway Bridge extends National Highway 207 across the Yangtze. The highway, which runs from Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia to Haian in Jiangsu province, connects with National Highway 318 and with the Yichang-Huangshi, Jingzhou-Xiangfan and Jingzhou-Changde expressways. The Taiyuan-Macau Highway also passes through Jingzhou. Expressway connects Jingzhou with Wuhan, three hours’ car journey to the east, and Yichang, one-and-a-quarter hours’ drive to the west.
Two railways run through Jingzhou: the line from Jiaozuo in Henan to Liuzhou in Guangxi is a national trunk line, while the Jingzhou-Shashi Railway is a local line used mainly for cargo transport. The Wuhan-Yichang line, which also passes through the city, was opened to traffic in 2005.
With its central location in southern Hubei, Jingzhou is an important hub on the north bank of the middle reaches of the Yangtze. The port has 107 berths and can accommodate vessels up to 3,000dwt. It has four dedicated rail lines serving its two major cargo terminals and this means that it is capable of providing multimodal transport services. Jingzhou also boasts the only public bonded warehouse in the region.
The port handles bulk shipments of ore, coal, grain, steel, mining construction materials, chemical raw materials and finished goods, machinery and light textiles. However, container traffic has been growing at a much faster rate than conventional cargo.
Yanka New Terminal went into operation in 1998. Rapid expansion necessitated a major expansion, the first phase of which was completed in 2007. Phase two, involving involve the construction of two multi-purpose berths for 3,000-5,000 dwt vessels, is well under way. This will give it a handling capacity of 1m tons of general cargo, 500,000 tons of dangerous goods and 200,000 teu of container traffic.
In recent years, the port has struggled to cope with increasing demand for the transhipment of dangerous goods, and another project that has been submitted for approval is a dedicated terminal for such goods, located 8km downstream of Yanka. Shishou, a county-level city of Jingzhou, is constructing an industrial terminal with a projected annual capacity of 1.55m tons.
Overall, the city plans to invest a total of Rmb1.1bn between 2006 and 2010 on port and channel renovation and construction, to increase throughput capacity to 25m tons and 100,000 teu by 2010. Key future projects include the Douhudi and Xuetangzhou breakbulk quays and a tourism terminal.
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