Wu Kequan, former CPC secretary of Kunshan city, Jiangsu province, has been hailed for his pioneering role in the city’s reform and opening up and great contribution to the city’s social and economic development.
More than 30 years ago, Kunshan, a county-level city under the administrative supervision of Suzhou, ranked at the bottom of the six counties in Suzhou.
Wu Kequan, then secretary of Kunshan’s CPC Committee, made aggressive efforts to launch an industrial zone on its own, which laid the foundation for Kunshan’s booming economic development and carved out the path of Kunshan that gained widespread reputation across the country.
Wu Kequan, former CPC secretary of Kunshan city
This is the photo taken when the contract on the city’s first Sino-Japanese joint venture was signed. It took merely one year for the project to be productive since negotiation began.
The yellowish photo records the settlement of the first Sino-foreign joint venture in Kunshan’s industrial zone, which laid the foundation for the emergence of Kunshan as the leader of economic growth at the country level.
In 1984, the State Council approved the establishment of 14 economic and technological development zones along the coast.
Ranking at the bottom of the six counties in Suzhou, Kunshan was barred from the economic and technological development zones, which made Wu worried a great deal. At that time, Wu had just been appointed mayor of Kunshan.
After making careful investigation and analysis, he made a bold decision to set up a development zone at the county’s own expense though the county’s fiscal budget had merely 3 million yuan.
With government endorsement, Wu and his team made strenuous efforts to secure 12 million yuan of loan from the local banks as the startup capital. In August that year, the industrial zone came into being in a 3.75-square-kilometer farmland.
Wu Kequan, former CPC secretary of Kunshan city
We had almost nothing at hand, let alone capital, technology, product, management and talent. But we have geographical advantages as we neighbor Shanghai. Then we decided to cooperate with enterprises in Shanghai.
In the following year, Wu traveled between Kunshan and Shanghai to attract investment of industrial projects from Shanghai.
In that year, he was told that a Japanese glove-making company was about to launch investment in Suzhou. He took immediate actions to talk the light industry bureau of Suzhou into adding Kunshan into the list of local enterprises to be inspected by the foreign investor.
In February 1985, China Swany Co., Ltd., the first ever Sino-foreign joint venture in Jiangsu Province, was put into operation in Kunshan, causing a big sensation across the country.
Xuan Binglong, ex-head of Kunshan Development Zone Administration
We made 102 trips to the provincial capital city Nanjing so that we could free the Japanese investor of the worry over the formalities. When everything was done, we gave the Japanese company an approval certificate.
Boosted by the initial success, Kunshan was soon making great progress in the introduction of one overseas investment project after another.
In 1991, Wu was promoted to be vice chairman of the standing committee of the people’s congress of Suzhou. It was time for him to retire. Instead, he continued to devote himself to the local economic development by playing an important role in the promotion of cooperative projects in the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park.
At the same time, starting from the industrial zone initiated by Wu Kequan, Kunshan continued to make drastic progress in its economic growth. In August 1982, the Kunshan Development Zone, which grew out of Wu’s industrial zone, became the country’s first national development zone at the county level.
The development of a number of multi-billion-yuan industrial clusters in electronic information, optoelectronics, and equipment manufacturing earned Kunshan the first place in the Top 100 counties in 2005. It has since retained the title for 14 consecutive years.
Throughout the emergence of Kunshan, Wu Kequan believes that the courage to be the first and the common struggle is the light of the spirit that is extremely vivid and runs through.
Wu Kequan believes that the courage to be the first and make undaunted efforts together is the spirit that has run through Kunshan’s success.
(Source:ourjiangsu.com)
