Business Environment

The eastern coastal city of Qingdao is a regional hub for transportation, trade and finance in northern China with a diversified industrial base that includes manufacturing of household appliances, consumer electronics, marine equipment, apparel and textiles and automobiles and locomotives as well as petrochemicals and offshore engineering. 

The city government is also seeking to build Qingdao into a heavyweight in wealth management, exhibitions, and high-tech industries and marine-related industries.

Thanks to advanced industrial expansion driven by internet technologies and infrastructure spending, the annual GDP of Qingdao reached 1 trillion yuan ($144.9 billion) in 2016. Qingdao is the 12th city to achieve the goal nationwide and the third in northern China after Beijing and Tianjin, joining the ranks of the "trillion-yuan club". 

One of China's most important port cities, Qingdao is a major trade hub along the new Eurasian Continental Bridge economic corridor and is set to become a first-rank component in the Belt and Road Initiative. 

The Port of Qingdao was established in 1892. It is an important hub of international trade and sea-going transportation along China’s Yellow River Basin and on the west coast of the Pacific. The port has established trade relations with over 700 ports in more than 180 countries and regions across the world. It enjoys the natural advantages of deep and wide water, and is free of ice and silt. 

The Port of Qingdao is composed of four main areas. It provides services of loading and unloading, storage and logistics for containers, coal, iron ore, crude oil, grain, etc. Passenger service is also provided at the port. It is a comprehensive million-ton capacity port capable of handling all kinds of general cargo, bulk cargo, and large equipment. 

Its total annual throughput reached a historic breakthrough of 500.36 million tons in 2016, with a growth of 3.3 percent year-on-year, ranking seventh in the world.

Qingdao constantly optimizes its business development environment. Fortune China rated the city as the “Best Rising Commercial City in China”. Qingdao was also included in the Top 10 Most Attractive Cities in China list by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs and the Top 10 Most Competitive Cities in China list by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 

Since reform and opening-up, Qingdao has been listed successively as a national economic center city, a coastal open city, a city specifically designated in the state plan and a sub-provincial city, all of which illustrate Qingdao’s distinctiveness. In 2016 the city’s GDP totaled 1,001.1 billion yuan, with a growth rate reaching 8.9 percent. The total output value of above-scale industrial enterprises reached 1,828 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 10.4 percent. General public budget revenue reached 110 billion yuan, growing at 14 percent. Fixed asset investment totaled 745.5 billion yuan, up 17.4 percent, and actual paid-in foreign investment reached $7 billion, a rise of 14 percent. All Qingdao’s county-level cities have ranked among China’s top one hundred counties.