A bird's-eye view of Haicheng District Beihai [Beijing Review]

The approval of Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Zone Development Plan and the establishment of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area have brought the city unprecedented development opportunities.

As modern industries have taken shape, industrial bases, namely electronics, petrochemical and new materials, are witnessing rapid growth.

In the near future, the city will concentrate on building the Electronics Information Manufacturing Industrial Base, where Beihai Electronics Industrial Park is a bright spot. Presently, major international electronics giants have set up factories in Beihai, such as LiteOn from Taiwan (the world's largest maker of disk drives for desk-top computers), AOC (the world's largest maker of LED monitors, and the world's third largest maker of LED color TV sets), Netac (the world's largest holders of patents for memory storage), 3Nod (the world's largest provider of audio solutions), and Johnson Electric (the world's largest maker of micro motors). The city has seen an explosive growth in its electronics industry, which generated output value worthy of 50 billion yuan ($8.02 billion) in 2012, up 65.56 percent over the previous year. By 2015, Beihai is expected to produce a total value of 100 billion yuan ($16.05 billion) from its electronic information industry.

Also on the agenda is the Petrochemical Industrial Base with Sinopec Projects as its prop. Now, the polypropylene transformation plant with an annual output of 200,000 tons has been completed; the second phase of Chemical Refinery Integration Project with an annual output of 10 million tons has been included in Sinopec's 12th Five-Year Plan; a feasibility study report from Guangxi LNG Project with an investment of 18.8 billion yuan ($3.02 billion) has completed the assessment phase.

At the same time, another six downstream industrial and related supporting projects will begin with a total investment of 580 million yuan ($93.04 million).

In 2012, annual output of Beihai's petrochemical industry reached 28.15 billion yuan ($4.52 billion). The output of its petrochemical industry is expected to hit 100 billion yuan by 2015, forming a major petrochemical industrial belt in the Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Area.

The Port-Surrounding New Materials Base will also be pushed forward with a focus on Chengde New Materials Projects. The first-phase project, which carried an investment of 12 billion yuan ($1.93 billion) with an annual output of 600,000 tons of Ni-Cr alloys, was put into operation in March 2011, generating revenue 7.47 billion yuan ($119.82 million) in 2012. In September 2012, the second phase of the project was put into operation with an output of 1.6 million tons. The 1.2 million-ton cold-rolled sheet project, with a total investment of 8.73 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), will begin in 2013.

The Port-Surrounding New Materials Base, which will cover an area of 6.5 square km, will introduce downstream manufacturers like cooking utensils, kitchenware, decoration and medical/sanitary products. The base will give a further boost to the opening-up and development of the Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Area.