Qingdao is a major coastal city in east China, an economic center in China, one of China’s first coastal open cities, a specifically designated city and sub-provincial level city in the state plan, and a marine research center.

Qingdao, cited as China’s “capital of sailing” and Asia’s best nautical city, hosted the sailing events of the 29th Olympic Games and the 13th Paralympic Games in 2008.

Qingdao is an excellent tourist city in China, a famous historical and cultural city in China, a national civilized city, a national clean city, a national garden city, a national water-saving city, a national model city for environmental protection, and a national model city for forestation.

Qingdao is one of China’s most beautiful cities, China’s most romantic cities, China’s ten most inhabitable cities, China’s ten most peculiar leisure cities, the most beautiful bays in the world, China’s most popular cities and the most recommendable Chinese cities to the world.

Qingdao, the capital of Chinese brands, ranks among the top ten brand cities in China, the top ten festival cities in China, China’s star cities in public welfare, China’s safest cities, China’s cities with the greatest sense of happiness, China’s ten happiest cities, the top cities for citizen satisfaction and the world-touching Chinese brand cities.

Qingdao is one of China’s most economically dynamic cities, China’s best commercial cities, cities with “Award for Entrepreneur Satisfaction”, top ten competitive cities in Chinese manufacturing industry, China’s best cities for attracting investments by Chinese merchants, and Chinese cities with the most investment potential in the eyes of multinational corporations, and has been cited as a “gold-medal city” in China for its investment environment by the World Bank.

Qingdao Profile

Qingdao, on the coast of the Yellow Sea, lies in the south of Shandong Peninsula (at 35°35'N–37°09'N and 119°30'E–121°00'E). It faces the Republic of Korea and Japan across the sea in the east. Qingdao currently has seven districts including Shinan, Shibei, Sifang, Licang, Laoshan, Huangdao and Chengyang, and five county-level cities of Jiaonan, Jiaozhou, Jimo, Pingdu and Laixi. Qingdao has a total area of 10,654 square kilometers, 1,159 square kilometers of which is the urban area. Qingdao has a total permanent population of 8.5 million and a total household registered population of 7.63 million, in particular, urban permanent population is 3.5 million and urban household registered population is 2.75 million.

The north China city Qingdao has a temperate monsoon climate. Due to the regulation of marine environment and the effect of southeast monsoon, ocean current and water mass, the urban areas have distinctive features of marine climate: humid air, moderate temperature, no very hot weather in summer and no very cold weather in winter. The average annual rainfall is 662mm; average temperature in summer is 24℃, and average temperature in winter is above 0℃.

Qingdao’s city tree is cedar; city flowers are camellia japonica and China rose.

Olympics & Qingdao

In the midsummer of 2008, the sailing events of 29th Olympic Games and 13th Paralympic Games were held in Qingdao, with 11 and 3 gold medals respectively. A total of 400 athletes from 62 countries and regions participated in the Olympic sailing event and 80 athletes from 25 countries and regions participated in the Paralympic sailing event. Chinese sailing team won one gold medal and one bronze medal in the event, realizing the breakthrough of gold medal in sailboard event and the breakthrough of “zero” medal in sailboat event in the history of Olympic Games. The century-old Qingdao closely connected with the century-old Olympic Games, showing Qingdao and designated it as a special city again.

The successful Olympic Sailing Event and Paralympic Sailing Event have not only showed the appeal of a prosperous, civilized and harmonious city, adding Qingdao element to modern sailing sport, but also set a new milestone for the 100-year Qingdao, leaving rich Olympic heritages. Olympic effect is accelerating the great change of the city, Olympic culture is improving the level of the city’s civilization, and Olympic spirit is inspiring all the citizens to walk towards the future with a brand-new look!

Economy & Development

In 2009, Qingdao's GDP reached 489 billion yuan, up 12.2% over the previous year; it hasmaintained double-digit growthfor the past 13 years. Three-industry structure was adjusted to 4.7:50.1:45.2 from 5.1:50.8:44.1 in the previous year. Total financial revenue was 146.4 billion yuan, up 16.9%. Qingdao's GDP stably ranked among the top ten places of Chinese mainland cities, and its five county-level cities ranked among China's top 100 counties in terms of overall economic strength.

With strong and solid industry foundation, Qingdao has basically established seven industrial bases of household electric appliances and electronics, petrochemicals, automobiles and locomotives, ship and ocean engineering, textile and clothing, foods and beverages, and machinery and steel. The output of household electric refrigerator and color TV take up 1/5 and 1/10 respectively of the total national output.

Qingdao's brand economy is world-famous. Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd., founded in 1903, is the earliest beer productive enterprise in China, with its export amount over 50% of the total Chinese amount. Since the 1980s, Qingdao has been making great efforts to implement famous brand strategy, and has gradually developed a group of well-known enterprises 24and brands, such as Haier, Hisense and Doublestar. After entering into the new century, brand economy has developed towards the direction of high technology and industrial clustering. Six enterprises have been ranked among Chinese top 500 brands. Haier Group has ranked 1st for eight consecutive years among them and ranks 1st among all brands of the industry in the world in terms of the market share of refrigerators and that of washing machines. Qingdao has two world-famous Chinese brands, 69 nationally-famous products and 64 nationally-famous trademarks. Five of its enterprises have won the national award for quality control. The industrial added value of famous brand enterprises takes up about 50% of that of the enterprises above the designated scale. Brand economy has pushed Qingdao to develop in the direction of brand city. Qingdao was successively cited as "capital of Chinese brands" and "top ten brand cities in China".

Transport & Communications

Qingdao is an important international trade port and marine transportation hub on the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. In 2009, the port handled 317 million tons of cargoes (222 million tons of cargoes for foreign trade) and 10.28 million standard containers, ranking seventh and ninth among world's largest ports respectively.

Qingdao Liuting International Airport reaches 4E standard. It has opened 96 airlines to more than 50 main Chinese cities, and 12 international (regional) passenger and cargo airlines to Tokyo and Osaka of Japan, Seoul and Busan of ROK, Paris of France (via Shanghai), seven European countries (via Beijing)and China Hong Kong and China Taiwan, operating more than 1,800 flights each week. In 2009, it handled 9.66 million person-times, and 196,000 tons of cargo and mail, up 17.8% and 5.9 % respectively.

Qingdao has a developed highway network. By the end of 2009, its highway traffic mileage reached 16,000 kilometers. Qingdao possesses 11 expressways with a mileage of 703kilometers, ranking first both in Shandong Province and in fifteen sub-provincial cities of China in terms of the number, mileage and density of expressways. It has realized “one-hour economic rim” in the city.

Tourism & Sightseeing

Surrounded by sea and mountains, Qingdao is noted for beautiful sceneries. Added with special historical heritages, Qingdao became China's famous tourist resort in the early 20th century. In 1998, Qingdao was designated one of China's first batch of best tourist cities. The magnificent coastline, the rolling fairyland Laoshan Mountain, the urban landscape dotted with red roofs and green trees against the blue sea and sky, the diverse architectures predominantly in a European continental style, the former residences of famous historical and contemporary personages, and the modern facilities for vacation, convention and exhibition have made Qingdao a unique city, which blends Chinese and foreign tastes and integrates mountain and sea views with city landscape. It has the most beautiful seaside and is an ideal destination for vacation, recreation, sightseeing, business activities, conferences and exhibitions. In 2007, Qingdao became the only one Chinese city selected as one of the most beautiful bays in the world. In 2009, it received more than 40 million domestic and foreign tourists (40.03 million), of which one million were from overseas. The total tourism revenue reached 48.9 billion yuan.

International Cooperation

Qingdao is one of China's first 14 coastal open cities. Since Qingdao and the Japanese city of Shimonoseki became sister cities in October 1979, Qingdao has established sister-city relations with 19 cities in 17 countries and entered into friendly relations and cooperation with 36 cities in 18 countries. More than 2,000 oversea trading firms, companies and financial institutions have set up permanent offices in Qingdao. Haier-Ruba Economic Zone in Pakistan is the first oversea economy and trade cooperation zone of China. In 2009, the total value of import and export trade was 44 billion US dollars; export value was 26.9 billion US dollars. Foreign direct investment in the account was 1.86 billion US dollars. Accumulated introduced foreign direct investment reached more than 32 billion US dollars. A total of 82 of the world top 500 enterprises had invested in 172 projects in Qingdao; introduced domestic capital was 46.5 billion yuan, up 14%. The contracted value and business volume of foreign contracted projects, labor cooperation and design consultation was 1.43 billion US dollars and 1 billion US dollars, up 70.8% and 37.8% respectively.