Binhai New Area is set to strengthen its role as a livable and smart city area, according to Tianjin's 14th Five-Year Plan draft. The area's efforts so far have seen progress in areas like innovation, manufacturing, ecological protection, reform and opening-up.

To strengthen innovative development, Binhai is accelerating steps to construct national-level innovation centers in fields such as synthetic biotechnology and advanced computing.

This year, Binhai has added two national technology business incubators and 13 enterprise key laboratories. It is estimated that by the end of the year, there will be 3,900 national high-tech enterprises, 3,000 national high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises, 1,280 start-ups, and 128 gazelle enterprises in Binhai.  

The district's manufacturing sector has seen a good start to the year, signing 67 projects in Feb with investment totaling 34 billion yuan($5.25 billion).

It is estimated that during this year, Binhai will implement 211 major projects with a total investment of 170.2 billion yuan, including three projects with an investment of more than 10 billion yuan and 42 projects with an investment of 1-5 billion yuan.

To fully release the vitality of the area, reforms aimed at allowing more land to be used for business purposes are being trialed.

Meanwhile, the area is also trying to integrate itself into the bigger picture of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development campaign. In Jan, 177 projects from Beijing were introduced, with an investment of 32.9 billion yuan.

In January there was an actual utilization of domestic capital of 11.1 billion yuan and of foreign capital of $510 million, a year-on-year increase of 24.8 percent and 14.4 percent respectively.

To build a world-class business environment, the area has formulated a plan covering all 18 indicators of the World Bank and China’s business environment evaluation, and has proposed 135 related reform measures.

The district also laid out plans to improve its education, health and transportation infrastructure. A total of 425 urban construction projects will be arranged this year, with a total investment of more than 240 billion yuan.