Henan touts decade of progress, success

Workers assemble tractors in a factory in Zhengzhou, Henan province, on May 26, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

Henan provincial government revealed the great progress the province has made in various fields over the past 10 years, including in the economy and agriculture, at a news conference in Zhengzhou on Sunday.

Lou Yangsheng, Party secretary of Henan province, said in his speech that the central task is to build a modern Henan, in a high-quality and high-level way.

By 2035, Henan's per capita GDP, urbanization rate, intensity of research and development investment, total labor productivity and per capita disposable income will achieve or surpass the national average.

Henan's economic aggregate has ranked fifth nationally for the past 27 years. However, uneven and inadequate development remains.

Over the past decade, the province prioritized development, ensuring steady growth and making structural adjustments.

It has achieved an average annual 7.1 percent increase in the total gross product in the past decade, with the ambitious aim of surpassing 6 trillion yuan ($873 billion) this year. The per capita disposable income of residents jumped from 12,772 yuan in 2012 to 26,811 yuan in 2021.

Henan is working hard to become a center of innovation and talent.

"Creating a new pattern of development presents many opportunities, competition and the need to reshape. Without progress or innovation, we will fall behind," Lou said, adding that innovation in technology and system are like two wheels driving the modernization of Henan.

Last year, the province invested over 100 billion yuan in research and development. In the first seven months of 2022, its turnover from technical contracts was 62.08 billion yuan, an increase of 145.6 percent from the same period last year.

As an agricultural province, Henan has worked continuously to unleash its advantages via rural vitalization.

Its grain yield accounts for about 10 percent of national output and although it was hit by serious flooding last year, it still produced 65.44 million metric tons of grain.

Lou said that agricultural processing was Henan's largest pillar industry, making the province China's "granary and kitchen".

It is also working to consolidate and expand the achievements of poverty alleviation in coordination with rural vitalization. Last year, those who had emerged from poverty experienced a 13.2 percent increase in their annual average incomes.

Henan has furthered the reform of State-owned enterprises to optimize the strategic use of State-owned assets and carried out financial reform across the province. It has also simplified the structures of government agencies and public institutions, while accelerating the transition to green and low-carbon development.

Named for being to the south of the Yellow River, the province has worked hard to care for China's "mother river" through measures such as the construction of dykes and river restoration. Thanks to good environmental conditions along the river, Sanmenxia now attracts some 16,000 white swans every winter.

As a core source for the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the province has undertaken 14 special actions to ensure the project's follow-up construction.

As a result of efforts to achieve carbon neutrality, energy consumption per unit of gross product has decreased by about 37.3 percent over the past decade.