Industrial investment amounts to billions in WND

The Wuxi National Hi-tech District is attracting large investment projects to drive the growth of local industries.

Aimed at becoming a pacesetter for high-quality development, the district in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, values the quality of investment projects in response to a strategy adopted by the city government in 2015.

According to the strategy, industries are the key force to enrich the city and major projects are crucial.

The district government is focused on attracting major investment projects, some of them each worth more than 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion).

Among the large projects is an integrated circuit research, development and manufacturing center of Shanghai-based Huahong Group.

The city government and the company signed a strategic cooperation agreement in August 2017. The project, with a total investment value of more than $10 billion, was settled in the Wuxi high-tech district. It is the largest-ever single investment in Wuxi. The project is also the first production facility that Huahong Group has invested in outside Shanghai.

The project's construction began in March 2018 and the first photolithography machines went into the factory in June 2019. Wuxi will become one of the most advanced IC production line-intensive areas in China, local media reported.

As one of the major industrial projects in Wuxi during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), the Huahong investment was acclaimed as a pacesetter in China's IC industry. It will help Wuxi's general semiconductor production technology evolve from 8 inches to 12 inches and consolidate the city's position as a microelectronics industry center in the southern half of China.

SK hynix, a semiconductor maker from South Korea, celebrated the completion of its second factory located in the Wuxi high-tech district in April. The project, with a total investment worth $8.6 billion, was signed in October 2017. It can produce 180,000 12-inch wafers monthly when it runs at full capacity.

The company's annual output is expected to account for more than 45 percent of the domestic market of dynamic random access memory products. It will support the South Korean company to consolidate and enhance its leading position in the industry. It will also help Wuxi foster an IC industrial cluster and build itself into a key hub in China's semiconductor sector, local officials said.

The company has developed in Wuxi for 14 years and invested a total of $14 billion. After signing the agreement for the second SK hynix factory, the high-tech district coordinated power and water supply and streamlined the administrative procedures to support the factory's construction.

The company will also build a hospital and school in the high-tech district. The school is to serve its employees and local people. It plans to recruit 1,000 primary school students in the first phase and build a junior middle school in the second phase, recruiting 500 students.

The new hospital is slated to open in 2022, aimed at becoming a comprehensive medical service provider that boasts globally leading medical solutions.

Both of the Huahong and SK hynix projects have developed in Wuxi since 2016, laying a solid foundation for the city's IC industry. The output value of the sector exceeded 110 billion yuan in Wuxi last year, ranking the city No 2 on the Chinese mainland.

The high-tech district is also a key area of the internet of things industry in Wuxi. This industry has become a new engine for the district's economic development, local officials said.

The district is home to more than 1,000 key IoT enterprises, involving design and manufacturing of sensing equipment, data collection and transmission, intelligent applications and services.

The industry's output value has maintained at least a double-digit increase for several years in the district. In 2018, the amount surpassed 160 billion yuan, accounting for more than 60 percent of the city's total.