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Fish farms making way for towering cranes
Aggregated Source: Shanghai Daily: Business

CHINA'S biggest fishery - Zhoushan in Zhejiang Province - is scattered over 1,390 islands in the East China Sea southeast of Shanghai.

Zhoushan is famous for fresh, diverse seafood and seafood lovers frequently pay a visit to the scenic area.

Buddhists also make the pilgrimage to Mount Putuo, a holy mountain and parklike wooded destination of temples, shrines and vistas. Tourists love the clean beaches.

In 2011, the State Council designated Zhoushan New Area as the nation's fourth state-level district, raising its economic development status and opening the way for the area's transition from a fisheries county to a new area of diverse economic development.

Towering cranes are beginning to appear where fish farms once flourished in the archipelago and highways and tunnels are under construction.

Baisheng Import & Export Trade Co is one of the many corporations that relocated to Zhoushan from other cities, drawn by the new area's referential policies such as tax and rent subsidies.

It moved headquarters from nearby Ningbo to Zhoushan in February and, under the incentive policies, is exempt from paying the 17 percent value added tax and local tax .

"Zhoushan's environment is very good and the company can pay lower taxes if we move here," said Xia Xinkang, the company's vice general manager who was born in Zhoushan and used to work in Ningbo. "For me, it's perfect to come back and work here."

"Our company can save several million yuan in taxes by the end of the year if our sales reach 1 billion yuan (US$163 million) as planned, which is quite a lot," Xia said.

The Baisheng trading company, like others, is located at the Zhoushan Bulk Commodity Exchange Center where the new area's customs, inspections and frontier authorities are also located. This makes it convenient to deal with import-export issues.

The center has also established a green channel to facilitate companies registration and settlement, so they can focus quickly and fully on business.

"It only took us one month to get all the paperwork and licensing done for the move here - that's something that typically takes two months because there are so many processes," Xia said.

"The center provides a very good business environment for us."

The company is about to buy property in Zhoushan to build a plant and create more jobs, thanks to incentive policies, Xia said.

"We had a plant in Ningbo and we are planning to move some of the orders to the new plant here," he said.

Xia said he expects an increasing number of companies to join Baisheng to move to Zhoushan due to the attractive policies.

Although there are strong incentives, Zhoushan also has strict rules on investment and environmental protection, since the ocean and islands are a valuable natural resource, both for fisheries and tourism.

"There are strict rules in recruiting investment and we will definitely avoid heavy industries and chemical companies," said Cao Hong, deputy director of Zhoushan's Economic Cooperation and Investment Promotion Bureau.

"We have turned down several domestic and overseas coal, mineral and chemical companies," she said.

"The environment is our first priority. The environment and tourism are our treasures. There's a lot of things money can't buy," she added.

Very few industries

Zhoushan has been developing while maintaining its original ecology.

"Why do people find the air quality so good here? Because we don't have much polluting industry. In fact, the whole city contains very few industries and that's why the central government would consider this advantageous for the new area," Cao said.

Moreover, since the area is comprised of more than a thousand islands, fresh water is comparatively limited in Zhoushan, which constrains the scale of economic development. The area does not recruit companies requiring a large amount of running water.

Most islands have reservoirs of rainwater to cover basic household consumption and there's a large water pipeline between Ningbo and Zhoushan. Some remote islands have small desalination plants. Zhoushan is also learning from Singapore to improve its water management.

However, while the new area has been busy identifying new industries and establishing a new economic development model, its traditional fisheries industry is under threat due to serious pollution in the East China Sea.

According to a recent report on China Central Television, the water quality of the East China Sea ranked lowest among China's four major seas and some fishermen in the area refuse to eat their own catch.

"When we talk about the threats to fishery resources we think of two aspects - over fishing and pollution," Cao said.

To deal with the problem of overfishing, Zhoushan has been throwing tons of fish fry back into the sea every year. It has also prolonged the fishing off-season from one month to three months, she said.

Zhoushan recognizes the serious pollution in the East China Sea, but it can have very little impact.

"We don't pollute but we cannot stop others from polluting," said Cao, who has lived in Zhoushan for more than 10 years.

"I have heard many residents say the environment, the sea and the air in their childhood were far better than they are today. I know pollution has hurt the city," Cao said.

"Pollution is not a problem that a single city can cope with," she said.

"There must be a regional or national effort, but we should fulfill our duty and be hopeful."

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