Qingdao is planning a region that will act as a springboard for trilateral economic cooperation.
The coastal city Qingdao in Shandong province aims to develop a new economic zone on its west coast, pledging to build it into an economic engine that could rival the city as a whole in terms of economic output in the next five years.
The West Coast Economic New Zone in Qingdao, Shandong province, will achieve a GDP of 500 billion yuan ($79.3 billion) by the end of the 12th Five-Year-Plan period (2011-2015), accounting for around 76 percent of the GDP of the whole city in 2011, according to the local government.
Qingdao is planning a region that will act as a springboard for trilateral economic cooperation, paving the way for formal negotiations on a free trade agreement among China, Japan and South Korea, which the three countries agreed to launch by the end of the year.