Striving for the "2 Trillion Yuan Mark", a Major Northern City Sets "Hard Targets"

According to Qingdao Daily, to promote the high-quality development of the city's marine economy, the Qingdao Marine Development Bureau has compiled the "Qingdao 15th Five-Year Marine Economic Development Plan (Draft for Comments)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan") and is now soliciting public feedback.

The Plan focuses on building a globally influential marine science and technology innovation center, a world-class international shipping center, a marine international cooperation hub, and a modern marine industry highland. It coordinates the advancement of seven key tasks: "forging a coordinated land-sea development pattern, accelerating high-level self-reliance in marine science and technology, strengthening and expanding the marine industry, developing a world-class marine port, expanding high-level marine opening-up, promoting harmonious and sustainable human-ocean development, and deepening comprehensive marine governance."

The Plan proposes that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Qingdao will coordinate the integrated development of marine scientific and technological innovation, industrial upgrading, shipping hub construction, ecological protection, and international cooperation, to basically build itself into a modern marine central city featuring leading marine science and technology, a prosperous marine economy, clustered marine talents, world-class port and shipping services, a pleasant marine ecological environment, thriving marine culture, and dynamic international marine exchanges.

Qingdao currently has an economic aggregate of 1.76 trillion yuan and is sprinting toward the "2 trillion yuan" target. Some observers point out that such a large GDP scale implies diverse economic and social entities, which cannot be driven solely by a single industry, enterprise, or group. In the era of high-quality development, it is even more necessary to rely on new industries, new business forms, and new technologies to drive the leap of the city's economic volume.

In this newly released Plan, Qingdao has set a clear target: by the 15th Five-Year Plan period, its gross marine product will maintain a leading position nationwide, accounting for 35% of the city's total GDP. Based on the established "2 trillion yuan" overall economic goal, this means the marine economic aggregate should reach 700 billion yuan — a gap of 150 billion yuan compared with the city's gross marine product of over 550 billion yuan achieved during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

This is not only a self-imposed pressure for Qingdao, but also stems from a sense of urgency brought by the situation where "there are benchmarks ahead and pursuers behind". In the latest round of national territorial spatial master plans approved by the State Council, multiple cities including Qingdao, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Dalian, Ningbo, and Xiamen have been positioned as "modern marine cities", creating a scenario of head-to-head competition on the same track.

In particular, Qingdao and Shenzhen are both strong coastal economic cities and sub-provincial cities, with their economic aggregates exceeding that of their respective provincial capitals. As the "main engines" of Shandong and Guangdong — two major provinces with robust marine economies — and the core hubs of the northern and southern marine economic circles respectively, the performance of the two cities in the marine economic field has long drawn widespread attention.

Statistics show that in 2020, the gross marine product of Qingdao and Shenzhen stood at 358 billion yuan and 259.64 billion yuan respectively, with Qingdao leading Shenzhen by nearly 100 billion yuan. No specific full-year figures for 2025 have been released by either city, but as of 2024, their gross marine products have risen to 551.32 billion yuan and 540.9 billion yuan respectively. In just four years, Qingdao's leading edge has shrunk sharply to only about 10 billion yuan.

Compared with Shenzhen's strong momentum, why has Qingdao slowed down? Previous reports have pointed out that Qingdao performs well in scientific and technological innovation source cultivation and port activity, but still needs to further enhance its urban capacity in areas such as marine scientific and technological achievement transformation, maritime services, and international hub construction.

In this Plan, Qingdao specifically proposes to smooth the transformation and implementation of marine scientific and technological achievements, and deploy a number of marine technology concept verification centers, pilot test platforms, and shared service facilities for basic scientific research. It will also promote marine universities and research institutes to optimize their technology transfer systems. At the same time, the city will develop "patient capital" to build a market-oriented venture capital cluster, and foster a team of technology brokers in the marine sector.

In addition, to make forward-looking arrangements for future industries, Qingdao has put forward plans to deeply participate in national deep-sea engineering projects and build a comprehensive deep-sea support base. The city will cultivate and develop the deep-sea exploitation industry, expand and strengthen the industry-university-research alliance for deep-sea economic development, and attract leading enterprises and upstream and downstream players in the industrial chain to set up deep-sea businesses in Qingdao.

This article is from the WeChat official account "City Evolution Theory", written by Yang Huan, and published with authorization from 36Kr.