Location Advantages

On the southern wing of the Yangtze River Delta, Zhejiang boasts unique geographical advantages for "bordering rivers and seas, bridging the east and the west, and linking the south with the north". The advantages lie mainly in four aspects:

Firstly, the Yangtze River Delta is becoming the most vigorous and promising area in China's economy. Zhejiang, as part of the Yangtze River Delta, is no doubt to enjoy enormous opportunities. With the continual acceleration of the construction of international economy, trade, finance and shipping centers in Shanghai, its huge convergence and radiation capacities are supposed to directly push the Yangtze River Delta area toward sustainable and sound development.

Secondly, within the Yangtze River Delta, Zhejiang owns resources and advantages different from those in Jiangsu in its economic linkage with the central city, Shanghai. The development of Jiangsu is principally "along the River and roads, while Zhejiang faces the sea and enjoys ocean advantages, which is of great benefit for Zhejiang to develop the ocean economy, a global-market-oriented economy, port industry and logistics, etc.

Thirdly, a number of geographical factors that used to encumber Zhejiang from being connected with Shanghai and integrated into the Yangtze River Delta are being removed, and new location advantages are turning into significant strengths in the process of economic integration with the Yangtze River Delta. For instance, the construction of the Bay Bridge will greatly shorten the economic distance between Zhejiang and Shanghai.

Fourthly, the process of economic integration in the Yangtze River Delta is also the process of emergence of city clusters in the Yangtze River Delta with Shanghai as the center. In the urbanization process, industrialization and informatization would inevitably follow. According to international common practice, manufacturing industry will enjoy a prosperous development between the central city and node cities in a city cluster. This provides new opportunities for Zhejiang to construct an advanced manufacturing base, thanks to its location on the southern wing of the Yangtze River Delta and to its mid and final period of industrialization.

Ecology

Zhejiang Province has relatively independent geographical units and location advantages, and the ecological system features abundant diversity with a variety of biological breeds. Its environmental supportive system is only next to that of Tibet and Hainan, ranking the third in the country. The terrain slopes down from the southwest mountainous area to the northeast plain in a step-like manner, and the topography and water system are self-contained. The eight grand water systems in Zhejiang Province basically originate from the province itself and the water environmental system is relatively independent; the river networks in the plain region are intensely spread and the water system is soundly developed; the holistic quality of water in the rivers and lakes is fine, and the water quality of most of the rivers meets or is better than Grade III of the environmental quality standard for surface water. The mountainous areas are densely distributed with vegetation covered in forests. The forest coverage is one of the highest in the nation, with the rate in southwest Zhejiang even higher. Currently, 16 natural reserves at national level and 83 forest parks at provincial level have been established in the whole province. Zhejiang Province is one of the provinces which have the largest number of forest parks in the nation.

Zhejiang is well-founded in terms of environmental protection and ecological construction. It is the fifth of the state-level ecological pilot regions. The overall quality of the ecological environment in the province is one of the best in the country. The tendencies of environmental contamination and ecological deterioration have been checked and the environmental quality has kept stable.

Notable achievements have been made in developing an eco-friendly economy. Zhejiang took the early initiative in developing eco-friendly agriculture, eco-friendly industry and eco-friendly tourism and the favorable tendencies have sustained. The industry of green food and organic food such as tea, canned food, fresh fruit, grain, oils and etc. keeps developing by leaps and bounds. The eco-friendly industry, especially the environmental protection sector, has had rapid development. A batch of production-study-research bases and bases of specialty industries has been developed as a priority. Capitalizing on the rich resources of a beautiful landscape, a long history and rich cultural heritage in Zhejiang, the eco-friendly tourism in our province is booming, making Zhejiang an important tourist destination.

Natural Resources

Mineral resources

There are more than one hundred kinds of minerals found in the province, of which non-metallic minerals are predominant. Twelve kinds of mineral reserves rank the country's top three, with stone coal, alunite, pyrophyllite, cement tuff, and building tuff reserves ranking first in the country, fluorite reserves ranking second, and diatomite ranking third. Those ranking among the top ten also include wollastonite, perlite, granite and zeolite. As to metallic minerals, silver, zinc, vanadium, cadmium reserves also rank top ten.

Biological Resources

The length of coastline, including island line in the province is 6,696 kilometers, of which there is 2,414 kilometers of mainland coastline, and 506 kilometers of deep-water coastline that can be planned to build berth of 10,000 tons, accounting for 30.7% of those in China. The water area in Zhejiang is China's largest fishery, and shallow water for breeding is more than 400 square kilometers. The sea basin in east China is an area for the tapping of oil and gas resources with good prospect. The intertidal mudflat resource along the coast is 2,886 square kilometers. In addition, the resources of marine tourism and marine energy are also very rich. There are more than 3,800 kinds of plants found in the province, and the forest area here is 902,040 hectares, with the coverage rate as high as 60.97%, known as China's “Southeast Botanical Treasure Place.” Ginkgo, usually called “the living fossil” and other 51 kinds of rare wild plants are included in the national list of protection. 689 kinds of wild animals are found here, including 18 kinds that are listed in the national first class protected animals.

Energy

The continental shelf is rich in oil and natural gas resources with a good tapping prospect.

Water resource

The annual average precipitation is 2,060.5 mm (equivalent to 213.47 billion cubic meters in total), and the total amount of water resource is 145.48 billion cubic meters, with water resource 2,656.2 cubic meters per capita. The total water consumption is 22.32 billion cubic meters in 2012, an increase of 1.4% compared with last year. The province has nine meteorological observatories with radar and satellite, 25 cloud map receiving stations, and 1,505 regional automatic weather stations.