AN official ceremony was held yesterday to make Guangming New Area the ninth district in Shenzhen.

Shenzhen Party chief Wang Weizhong, Mayor Chen Rugui and other top officials attended the ceremony, marking the establishment of Guangming District.

Guangming, originally part of Bao’an District, became Shenzhen’s first new area 11 years ago as the city started reforms to introduce new areas in a bid to speed up economic growth and improve administration in districts outside of the original special economic zone.

The latest move came after Longhua and Pingshan became districts in a new reform to improve administration, planning and urban construction, Shenzheng Guancha, a new media platform of the Shenzhen Economic Daily, reported yesterday. The upgrade of Guangming New Area will reduce the number of new areas in Shenzhen to one, namely Dapeng New Area.

Covering 156.1 square kilometers and bordering Dongguan City in the north, Guangming has six subdistricts, namely Guangming, Gongming, Xinhu, Fenghuang, Yutang and Matian. The district had 560,800 permanent residents as of the end of 2016. Its 2017 GDP reached 85 billion yuan (US$13.28 billion).

Guangming convened its first district Party congress yesterday to elect the first Party leaders to lead the district. The report to the congress revealed that the district will aim to develop high-end industries including new-generation displays, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, and cultural and creative industries.

The district will build a world-class technology town called Guangming Science Town, which will include the Sun Yat-sen University Shenzhen Campus and Guangming Cloud Valley, according to the report.

(Lin Min)

(Xinhua)