Hubei: 70 years on

Editor's Note: Starting this May, the State Council Information Office has held news conferences for each province, autonomous region and municipality to give briefings about their social and economic development since the founding of New China 70 years ago.

During the Hubei session held on June 19 in Beijing, Jiang Chaoliang, secretary of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee and governor Wang Xiaodong detailed the province's achievements.

Economic development

The regional GDP of Hubei province reached 3.94 trillion yuan ($559.66 billion) in 2018, up 215 times over that in 1952, with an average annual growth of 8.5 percent.

The added value of high-tech industries amounted to 665.3 billion yuan in 2018, up 92 times over that in 1996.

Industrial structure

The ratio of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries has changed from 56.7:15.6:27.7 in 1952 to 9.0:43.4:47.6 in 2018.

Regional coordinated development

Hubei province has been promoting coordinated development among west Hubei, east Hubei and the Jianghan Plain areas. Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, achieved a GDP in 2018 of 1.48 trillion yuan while those of Yichang and Xiangyang were over 400 billion yuan. The urbanization rate of Hubei has climbed from 10.1 percent in 1952 to 60.3 percent in 2018.

Reform and opening-up

The total import and export volume of Hubei in 1953 was $82 million while the number hit $52.8 billion in 2018, a 634-fold increase. A total of 283 companies among the World Top 500 have invested in the province. Foreign investment in actual use reached $11.94 billion in 2018 with a year-on-year increase of 8.6 percent.

Hubei has been actively participating in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The province has achieved an overseas project turnover of $23.9 billion and new contracts worth $42.3 billion have been signed along the BRI.

Improving people's livelihoods

From 2014, Hubei has lifted 4.91 million people out of poverty, with the incidence of poverty dropping from 14.4 percent to 2.4 percent.

In the first five months of 2019, 386,700 job offers were created in urban areas and the urban registered unemployment rate has been maintained at 2.49 percent.

The per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents in 2018 reached 34,000 yuan and 15,000 yuan, 83 and 88 times that in 1980.