Anhui punching above weight in steadily moving up the industrial value chain

Businesses have been benefiting from high-quality opening-up in Anhui province.

Sinotrans Logistics upgraded its branch in the province's capital city of Hefei into its Central China headquarters in 2019.

The company took the decision to upgrade its branch after a top symposium was held in May 2019 in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, which focused on the rise of the central part of China.

The region includes the provinces of Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Shanxi.

"The central region's increasingly robust manufacturing sector has been bringing more opportunities for logistics companies, while Anhui could lead the growth," said Tang Na, general manager of Hefei-based Sinotrans Logistics Central China Ltd.

He said the company's 2020 operating revenue in Anhui alone reached about 200 million yuan ($30.6 million) and the performance in the first quarter of this year is expected to improve even more.

Currently using rented storage plants, Tang said his company is now building multiple facilities of its own across Hefei, which will see a total investment of 1.7 billion yuan.

Included in the country's ambitious blueprint for the rise of the central region, Anhui is also, even more often, regarded as a part of East China.

China has vowed to step up the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta region, which includes Shanghai along with the provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

As a result of recent reforms and opening-up measures, cargo transported to and from the eastern coastal areas can now complete Customs clearance in Anhui conveniently, which means importers and exporters can save time and storage costs, Tang added.

Though not a customer of Tang's company, personal computer manufacturer LCFC (Hefei) Electronics Technology has been a major exporter.

In the last week of 2020, the Hefei-based manufacturer announced that its annual sales revenue had for the first time surpassed 100 billion yuan.

Founded in 2011 in the Hefei Economic and Technological Development Area, LCFC is Lenovo's largest PC manufacturing base in China. With a foreign trade volume of $8.5 billion in 2020, LCFC had remained the province's largest company for imports and exports for seven consecutive years as of 2020, according to provincial government statistics.