Recently, the General Office of the Anhui Provincial People’s Government and the General Office of the Henan Provincial People’s Government jointly issued the “Implementation Plan for Cooperative Development in the Anhui-Henan Interprovincial Border Areas” (hereinafter referred to as the “Implementation Plan”), aiming to improve the implementation mechanism of the regional coordinated development strategy and deepen exchanges and cooperation in the Anhui-Henan border areas.
The “Implementation Plan” defines the implementation scope and development goals. The Anhui-Henan border areas include the entire regions of Bozhou, Fuyang, Lu’an, and Huaibei cities in Anhui Province, as well as Dangshan County and Xiao County in Suzhou City; and the entire regions of Shangqiu, Xinyang, Zhoukou, and Zhumadian cities in Henan Province, covering an area of 96,000 square kilometers. The goal is that within 5 years, the interprovincial border areas will achieve convenient, efficient, and interconnected infrastructure, basically form industrial clusters, reach a new level in regional open cooperation, implement and achieve results in key area cooperation matters, explore and form a batch of replicable and promotable regional cooperation innovation experiences, and build into a new model for cooperative development in interprovincial border areas in the central region.
The “Implementation Plan” proposes to strengthen infrastructure interconnectivity and jointly build a convenient central region sea access waterway channel. It calls for accelerating projects such as the regulation of the Tuohe River and Guohe River waterways and the renovation of the Guoyang ship lock, commencing construction on the Fuyang double-line ship lock on the Shaying River, and orderly advancing preliminary work for waterways like the Shaying River “Four to Three” upgrade, the Jialu River waterway (Zhoukou-Zhengzhou section), and the Hongru River. It also explores establishing a cross-provincial coordination mechanism for waterway maintenance to ensure the smooth flow of upstream and downstream waterways and ship locks.
Furthermore, the “Implementation Plan” proposes jointly establishing a coordinated open development mechanism. Leveraging the China-Europe Railway Express from Hefei and Zhengzhou and the Jianghuai sea-rail intermodal transport channel, it aims to accelerate the “sea access” pace for the Anhui-Henan border areas. By focusing on key countries and regional agricultural product markets, it intends to cultivate a number of high-quality agricultural international trade development bases and expand the export of characteristic and advantageous agricultural products. It also aims to actively undertake the transfer of coastal processing trade industries, jointly create key undertaking areas for the gradient transfer of processing trade, demonstration zones for undertaking processing trade transfer, and processing trade industrial parks. It will promote trade digitalization and jointly create cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones.
All-media reporter Shi Mengyuan
