North China's Tianjin Municipality is taking full advantage of its geographical location to further open up to the rest of the world, and, since the beginning of the year, has passed some major milestones on its path to high-quality development.
By the end of July this year, 417 China-Europe and Central Asia freight trains had departed from Tianjin, an increase of 17.8 percent year on year.
During the same period, the 800th A320 aircraft built at the Airbus final assembly line in Tianjin began final assembly.
Meanwhile, more than 200,000 inbound and outbound traveler trips were recorded at the Tianjin International Cruise Home Port, while the 24th Luban Workshop, an international cooperation project in vocational education pioneered in Tianjin, expanded overseas.
"The Tianjin Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) has implemented 686 institutional innovation measures, and 49 institutional innovation achievements have been replicated and promoted nationwide. Next, we will focus on enhancing market access in investment and service trade, as well as the resilience of industrial and supply chains, to achieve an overall improvement in the level of institutional opening up, the effectiveness of systematic reforms, and the quality of an open economy," said Liang Yiming, full-time deputy director of the management committee of the Tianjin Pilot FTZ.
In May, a direct rail-ship freight service from Tianjin Port to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was launched. The new route is 800 kilometers shorter than before, strengthening international shipping channels between Tianjin and the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
In the first seven months, Tianjin reached 244.42 billion yuan (about 34.13 billion U.S. dollars) in export, up 10.4 percent year on year.
The city is geared up to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit this coming Sunday. This year's two-day gathering will bring together leaders from more than 20 countries and heads of 10 international organizations, marking the largest gathering in the organization's history and underscoring its growing global influence.
"Taking the hosting of the SCO Summit as an opportunity, we will continue to amplify the spillover effects of the summit, focus on all-round and multi-level opening up, promote Tianjin's better participation in global industrial chain cooperation, build a platform for all-round opening up, and strive to create an important strategic fulcrum for connecting the domestic and international dual circulation in northern China," said Sun Jiannan, director of the Tianjin Commerce Bureau.
Tianjin advances high-level opening up, promotes greater integration with SCO members
