Adora cruise ship sets sail along historic Maritime Silk Road

CCID Consulting's Urban Economic Research Center recently released its annual ranking of urban investment competitiveness. Siming ranked 24th overall and Huli ranked 43rd. CCID Consulting is a national think tank under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The assessment of more than 900 districts covered factors such as open data access, market concern orientation and scientific and fair evaluation. The system included six top-level indicators and 20 second-level indicators including government services, openness, the environment, industrial vitality, talent attraction and factor guarantee.

The Gulangyu Concert Hall last week hosted a charity New Year concert featuring a range of singers and performers. The Gulangyu Management Committee and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music organized the event.

The concert featured more than a dozen performances. The evening's selections included Waves of Gulangyu (full orchestra), Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix (piano solo) and Red Plum Capriccio (bamboo flute and orchestra). Other pieces included Jiangnan (soprano solo), Azure Jade Table - Lantern Festival (tenor solo) and China in Lights (chorus).

Officials from the Yundang Lake Protection Center and the Xiamen Municipal Construction Group last week announced that the second phase of the Yundang Lake District Fitness Trail is now open. The closed loop connects with both the Bailuzhou West Park Fitness Loop and the Xihu Lake Fitness Trail.

The annual C&D Xiamen Marathon is set to kick off on January 5, 2025, at 7:30 a.m. The race's 35,000 participants will line up in 12 zones and start running in six waves along the race's scenic route.

This year's field includes runners from more than 40 countries. This edition of the marathon drew more than 180,000 applicants, a record high for the event. The overall entry acceptance rate rose to 11.8 percent, up from last year's five percent rate.

The total assets of Xiamen's municipally-supervised state-owned enterprises surged to 2.4 trillion yuan, a 7.3-fold increase compared to the end of 2012, with an average annual growth rate of 20 percent. These enterprises now account for a third of the total assets of Fujian's state-owned enterprises.

In terms of economic contribution, Xiamen's municipally-supervised SOEs generated over 120 billion yuan in added value last year, up five-fold from 2012. They achieved an average annual growth rate of 16 percent, outpacing the city's GDP growth rate by six percentage points.

The companies have a total combined workforce of 210,000 employees. The companies' 123,000 local workers constitute nine percent of the city's total urban non-private sector workforce.

The China Customs Brokers Association and the Beijing Re-code Trade Security and Facilitation Research Center released recently the assessment results of their business environment assessment of maritime ports and their container goods cross-border trade. Xiamen once again earned the assessment's highest star rating.

The assessment's top ports also included Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Lianyungang, Fuzhou, Dalian, Huangpu and Zhuhai. The overall performance of the port business environment improved this year compared with 2023.

Xiamen increased its rating to 4.5 stars, up from last year's four-star rating. In additional to its overall win, Xiamen ranked first in three separate categories: cross-border trade port costs, informatization and paperless services, and commercial services.

Gulangyu recently hosted a gathering of artists organized by the China Artists Association to capture scenes of the islet with brushes and ink. Fan Dian, chairman of the association, said that each of his visits to Xiamen has left him with a fresh impression. “New buildings continually reshape the skyline while advancements in transportation, urban management, greenery and ecological development are transforming the city at an extraordinary pace,” he remarked.

Mr. Fan also noted how well Xiamen's red-roofed houses, lush greenery and sparkling waves present themselves in paintings of the city's urban landscape. “These works showcase the evolving spirit and unique charm of this coastal city.”

Construction is in full swing on multiple civil aviation projects at Xiamen's Xiangan airport. Workers at the project's air traffic control tower project stands have deployed a high-efficiency tower-building machine.

The 99-meter-tall tower will include 21 floors. It is the first control tower in China to feature a double-cylindered cast-in-place steel-integrated structure. Its construction will integrate the main structure with the curtain wall, reducing the construction period by two months.