Hunan is hometown of Chairman Mao Zedong, one of the main founders of the People's Republic of China.
In greeting the 70th birthday of New China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China has hold an activity themed on "China in the New Era: Innovative Hunan Going Global" to promote Hunan around the world in September 2019. A total of more than 500 people including envoys to China from more than 140 countries, representatives of international organizations, representatives of the industry and commerce communities, and journalists of Chinese and foreign media attended the activity. Prior to the promotion, Hunan Provincial Government hosted a cooperation meeting with the enterprises among the Global 500. At such an important juncture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China hosted the global promotion for the hometown of Chairman Mao Zedong, one of the main founders of New China, which manifested China's firm determination to continue to pursue the policy of opening up. The promotion will build an important platform for strengthening Sino-foreign cooperation.
Hunan is home to generation upon generation of outstanding talents. Amid the great transformation of the Chinese nation from decline to rejuvenation in modern times, Hunan has been playing the role of the mainstay. Wei Yuan, the first Chinese to have looked beyond the border into the world; the representatives of the Chinese Westernization Movement including Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Hu Linyi; the representative of China's Reform Movement, Tan Sitong; and the representatives of the Chinese bourgeois revolution including Huang Xing, Song Jiaoren, Cai E and so on all came from Hunan. Notably, a large number of Hunan-native CPC members represented by Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Ren Bishi, Peng Dehuai, He Long and other elder-generation revolutionaries were more than ready to "worry about the world and dare to run to forefront"; they advanced to wage arduous struggles for the independence and liberation of the Chinese nation and made glorious contributions, and some of them died heroic deaths. Among the 10 supreme commanders of the People's Republic of China, three came from Hunan; among the 10 senior generals, six from Hunan; among the 55 chief generals, 18 from Hunan; and among the 36 revolutionary military experts recognized by the Central Military Commission of China, 15 come from Hunan. Just because of Hunan people's outstanding contributions to China's social progress, historians can't help saying, "A half of the history on modern China is related to Hunan!"
President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to the development of Hunan. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to, devotes deep passion to, and pins fond hopes on Hunan Province, and puts forward important instructions on pursuing the "Transitional Belt and Connecting Space" Initiative, "Targeted Poverty Alleviation", "The Three-point Working to Ensure" and "Protecting the River", which points out the direction and provides the fundamental basis for the development of various undertakings in Hunan. On November 3, 2014, President Xi Jinping came to the Shibadong Village at Huayuan County, Hunan Province, where he cordially chatted with the village officials and villagers and talked about development. There President Xi Jinping for the first time put forward the basic strategy for poverty alleviation in the new era, namely, targeted poverty alleviation, and made an important instruction of "seeking truth from facts, acting according to circumstances, guiding by the category and conducting targeted poverty alleviation". Guided by the thought of targeted poverty alleviation, Hunan has worked out a path of poverty reduction that can be reproduced and promoted, which has not only lifted the whole of the Shibadong Village out of poverty, but also made Hunan top the country in terms of poverty alleviation. In a span of six years, Hunan has reduced the impoverished population by 6.84 million and has become a model of targeted poverty in China, making significant contributions to poverty reduction in the world.
Hunan, brimming with vitality for innovation, offers endless opportunities for business cooperation. Hunan sticks to advancing comprehensive innovation across the board by putting the focus on technological innovation, pushes ahead with the endeavor of building a province of innovators, and speeds up the construction of a new system of innovative economy. Here in Hunan have emerged a batch of world-leading technological achievements as reflected in supercomputers, super hybrid rice, maglev technology, Beidou satellite and deep sea drilling rigs. In 2018 the added value of the high-tech industry accounted for about 25% of the GDP of the province. In China Science and Technology Conference of the last year, Hunan won 27 National Technology Awards, 1/10 of the national total. Currently, Hunan has a complete range of industries, including the three industries (of equipment manufacturing, new materials, and agricultural products processing) each worth trillions of yuan, the 11 industries each worth hundreds of billions of yuan, including those of machinery, food, petrochemicals, non-ferrous metals, electronic information, building materials, metallurgy, mobile Internet and electric power. In addition, the industries on cultural creativity, publishing, animation, environmental protection and automobiles maintain good development momentum, and the emerging service industries like e-commerce and service outsourcing are developing rapidly. At present, Hunan has become China's largest rail transit R&D, production and export base; engineering machinery manufacturing base; and small and medium-sized aero-engine and aircraft take-off and landing system development base. Hunan leads the world in term of the global market share of electrical vehicles and in terms of the concrete machinery production. Hunan engineering machinery is seen on the construction sites of more than 100 countries.
Hunan sticks to the development path of opening-up and cooperation. Hunan is located in the center of China. On the magic land of 211,800 square kilometers live more than 73 industrious and intelligent people. In the keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the First Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, President Xi Jinping told a story that ancient Chinese sailed out into the vast sea and opened the maritime silk road to link the East and the West, as evidenced by the Shipwreck "Black Rock" dating back a millennium that had been discovered in Indonesia. In fact, what was aboard the said ship was mostly the pottery from Tongguan Kiln of Changsha, Hunan.
Since the start of reform and opening-up in China, Hunan has been endeavoring to break the stereotyped thinking typical of the inland, to cooperate with Global 500, to play a role in relation to the New Silk Road and the free trade zone, to support Hunan businessmen, to seek cooperation with Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and to speed up the pace to build itself into a competitive opening-up province. So far it has made remarkable achievements, with the GDP growing from 1.77 billion yuan in 1949 to 3.64 trillion yuan in 2018, which made it rank eighth in the country in terms of GDP, and with the per capita GDP growing from less than 10 US dollars to 8,000 US dollars. Hunan has founded friendly city ties with 90 provinces, states and cities aboard, and established trade relations with more than 200 countries and regions. Among the Global 500, 173 have invested or run projects in Hunan. More than 1,5000 Hunan enterprises have expanded their presence in 92 countries and regions. Hunan has made its hybrid rice, engineering machinery and rail transit go global, which proved to be very popular around the world. Hunan sees the mileage of its high-speed railway and expressway reach 1,730 kilometers and 6,725 kilometers respectively, and operates 51 international air routes leading to 20 countries. It has successively opened the ports for railway, highway, aviation and waterway; it has five state-level comprehensive bonded zones and 12 designated import ports. In June 2019 the First China-Africa Economic and Trade Fair was held in Hunan, which was attended by 53 African countries and 10-plus international organizations. At the Fair 81 agreements were signed involving a transaction value of over 20 billion US dollars, which turned a new chapter of the province for opening-up and win-win cooperation.
Today, Hunan is trying to bring into play the advantages of the hometown of outstanding celebrities as a culturally fertile place, of the advantages of its location in the transitional belt between the coastal area of East China and the middle and western region of the country and in the connecting space between the Yangtze River Economic Opening-up Belt and the Coastal Economic Opening-up Belt, and of the advantages of innovation achieved via gathering talents and making breakthroughs. It speeds up the pace to implement the strategy of innovation-driven opening-up and rise, and endeavors to build a market-oriented, law-based international business environment.
In a word, a new wonderful landscape of rich, beautiful and happy Hunan is unfolding itself. All friends from around the world are welcome to go to Hunan to feel its charm, to find opportunities for cooperation and development, and to make new contributions to the development, prosperity and progress of human civilization.