Blueprint released for Zhoushan new area

The blueprint for Zhoushan Archipelago New Area is being released in Hangzhou city in East China's Zhejiang province.

It's the country's fourth state-level new district. The other three are: Pudong New Area in Shanghai, Binhai New Area in Tianjin and Liangjiang New Area in Chongqing. Zhoushan is designed to be a pioneer in leading oceanic economic development as well as an important new growth engine for the Yangtze River Delta economic zones. Now let's see the live pictures.

BACKGROUND INFOR:

The New Area covers all of Zhoushan City, with over 1-thousand square kilometers of land area and over 20-thousand square kilometres of inland sea.

It's China's first new district highlighting the oceanic economy at the state level.

The New Area will become a trade center for the storage, transport and processing of bulk commodities. It will also become a comprehensive demonstration zone for island protection and development.

The local government will work to improve the layout, step up policies to create a favorable environment, and create measures to protect the marine environment while exploring economic growth.

Zhoushan New Area comprises over 1.3 thousand islands with 280-kilometer-long deep-water coastline.

In 2010, industrial output of Zhejiang's marine sector stood at over 350 billion yuan. According to the blueprint, the demonstration zone is expected to yield over 700 billion yuan by 2015. That would be 16 percent of Zhejiang's GDP and 15 percent of national marine industrial output.