YEARS ON JILIN
CHINA DAILY Thursday, August 22, 2019 | 7Editor's note: As the People’s Republic of China prepares to celebrate its 70th anniversary on Oct 1, China Daily is featuring a series of stories on the role regions have played in the country’s development and where they are today.
JilinChangchunMUKESH MOHANAN / CHINA DAILYGDP
Unit: billion yuan1,507.
($214.55 billion)
2018
642.
2008
157.
1998
8.
19781.
1952Annual per capita disposable
income of urban residents
Unit: yuanAnnual per capita disposable
income of rural residents
Unit: yuanArea: 187,400 square kilometers26.27.27.27.27.19972000200420082018Population
Unit: million05000100003500003000600090001200015000Source: Jilin Provincial Bureau of Statistics4,
20008,
200515,
201024,
201530,
($4,294)
201813,
($1,957)
2018
11,
2015
6,
3,264^2010
2,023 2005
2000By ALEXIS HOOI, XU XIAODAN
and LIU MINGTAI in Changchun
As a forest ranger for three dec-
ades, nothing much fazes Wang Wei
in the wild.
But Wang still remembers one
encounter with an aggressive black
bear, which caused him and two col-
leagues on a routine patrol to run for
their lives.
“It was less than 20 meters away,
standing on its hind legs and poised
to attack. We didn’t take any chan-
ces,” Wang, 50, said.
The harrowing experience has
not stopped Wang from heading
back into the forest to protect its flo-
ra and fauna. It is an unshakable
sense of duty that he inherited from
his father, who was also a ranger,
Wang said.
The rangers themselves are part
of a dedicated environmental con-
servation team deployed in the
Changbai Mountains, Jilin prov-
ince, that has successfully main-
tained the national nature reserve
as one of the world’s most pristine
and ecologically important areas for
decades.
Global biodiversity
Wang Shaoxian, director of the
Changbai Mountain Nature Conser-
vation Management Center, shares
the same conviction to protect and
preserve the nature reserve.
The Changbai Mountains cover
nearly 2,000 square kilometers of
primary forest in the province.
The area contains one of North-
east Asia’s major mountain ranges,
topping 2,740 meters and crowned
by a crater lake covering nearly 10 sq
km with a depth of more than 370
meters.
Changbai plays an important role
in maintaining global biodiversity
as the area was spared from the eco-
logical devastation of one of the
Earth’s major ice ages, Wang Shao-
xian said.
The reserve boasts more than
2,600 types of flora and over 1,
types of fauna, he said.
“We are one of the country’s first
important nature reserves, dating
back to 1960. In past decades, we
have successfully preserved and
protected its remarkable ecology,”
Wang Shaoxian said.
“Changbai is an ecologically pre-
cious part of the world and serves asan environmental gene bank in that
respect.
“Just here in Changbai, you can
see biodiversity that represents the
ecologies of zones stretching more
than 4,000 kilometers across the
globe, from the northern temperate
areas to the Arctic.”
The Changbai area actually con-
tains distinct ecological bands
according to altitude, ranging from
a broad-leafed forest belt at 500
meters and below, to a coniferous
zone at between 1,100 meters and
1,700 meters, and rising up to an
alpine tundra stretch at 2,
meters and above.
“Eighty percent of the world’s tun-
dra vegetation is Arctic-based, that
means if you don’t come to Chang-
bai, you’d have to go to the North
Pole to see those types of orga-nisms,” Wang Shaoxian said.
“We also have nonnative species
that have taken root here, such as
what was originally European birch.
Being spared from the ice age, we
have, in a sense, protected such flora
for the world.”Delicate balance
While the green gems have helped
place Changbai among the country’s
top scenic spots, protecting the area
from human impact and environ-
mental degradation still takes prior-
ity. Public access to some zones in
the reserve are subject to daily limits
of 25,000 people, according to man-
agement regulations.
“We need to strike a delicate
balance between opening up the
reserve to tourists and protecting
it from any damage,” forest ran-ger Wang Wei said.
Wang Wei and the 16 full-time
staff members also take on crucial
firefighting and fire prevention
roles at their Toudao conservation
management station, the first of
nine major stations located across
the reserve.
“We’ve successfully protected this
precious environment in recent dec-
ades and that must remain our top
responsibility. This is also in line
with the environmental priorities of
the province and the rest of the
country,” conservation manage-
ment center director Wang Shao-
xian said.
Changbai’s environmental
achievements have helped Jilin
become one of the “greenest” prov-
inces in the country, on the back of
extensive forestation measures.
Forest cover made up less than 30
percent of the province in the early
years of the People’s Republic of Chi-
na, but that has since grown to more
than 44 percent, or 8.27 million hec-
tares of forest, according to provin-
cial authorities. Last year alone, the
province completed a major foresta-
tion drive that included converting
nearly 1 million hectares of waste-
land into forest.
“Ecological health is our greatest
advantage, our most important
form of branding and our best asset.
Ultimately, Jilin’s foundation is built
on its environment and that is
something we greatly cherish,” said
the province’s Party secretary, Ba-
yanqolu.
Safeguarding the environment is
the same as safeguarding the sancti-
ty of life, he said.
Environmental authorities also
point to the successful protection of
the Siberian tiger and Amur leopard
populations in the province as a
clear reflection of the environmen-
tal achievements.
With the expansion of their habi-
tats and growing abundance of food
sources, the apex predators have
flourished. Over the past two dec-
ades, the number of tigers in the
wild has risen from four or six to
more than 27, while leopard num-
bers have grown from three or five
to more than 42, according to pro-
vincial authorities.
“This is a very special place but it
is also fragile. We are doing mean-
ingful work here and I really hope
the environment continues to
improve,” Wang Shaoxian said.
“We must pass on its beauty for
future generations to enjoy.”Contact the writers at
[email protected]Satellites provide lift to province’s advanced manufacturing drive
By LIU MINGTAI
and ZHOU HUIYING in Changchun
The Jilin 1 satellite has helped
launch the province’s advanced man-
ufacturing drive, along the way pro-
viding precise data for firefighting
and environmental protection. The
first commercial remote sensing sat-
ellite system developed in China, Jilin
1 was sent into space in October 2015,
said Jia Hongguang, deputy general
manager of Chang Guang Satellite.
Since then, 13 more satellites have
been put into orbit.
“We have significantly improved
satellite service levels, including the
ability to revisit any location in the
world within a day and complete a
general nationwide probe in one
month,” Jia said.
The resolution capabilities of the
satellites have also improved great-
ly, while the weight of the latest sat-
ellite is only 40 kilograms, making
it one of the lightest in the world, he
said. The technological advances of
the Jilin 1 are representative of the
province’s innovation-driven
growth strategy in recent years as it
moves away from its old industrial
base.
Other innovations in the province
include high-speed and subway
technologies for the rail sector.
State-owned railway equipment
manufacturer CRRC Changchun
Railway Vehicles has developed the
Fuxing high-speed trains that boast
top speeds of 350 km/h and a maglev
rail system, and is firmly placed as a
global innovator in the sector.
Yu Dongming, deputy director of
the company’s research and develop-ment department, said CRRC Chang-
chun’s innovation platform includes
a national engineering laboratory for
high-speed train systems integration,
a national enterprise technology cen-
ter and a national railway-bus system
integration engineering technology
research center.
“We have founded a large research
and development team including
more than 2,700 researchers,” he said.
CRRC Changchun’s achievements
include groundbreaking research
and applications relating to train
materials and components, such as
the upgrading of carbon steel mass
transit vehicle body parts to stainless
steel ones. It has also applied carbon
fiber manufacturing techniques to
subway vehicles.
The company’s next-generation
subway project has unmanned driv-ing functions, which have met ini-
tial industry requirements from the
Ministry of Science and Technology,
according to Yu.
CRRC Changchun is the major
subsidiary of CRRC Corp, the
world’s largest train maker which is
based in Beijing. The subsidiary,
based in Jilin, is the first Chinese
railway equipment manufacturer to
expand overseas, achieving record
numbers of exports of vehicles.
More than 9,000 vehicles have
been delivered to 22 countries and
regions, including Australia, Brazil,
Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the
United States, with a cumulative
export volume of $12 billion, accord-
ing to the group.Contact the writers at
[email protected]Workers assemble a high-speed train at a factory of CRRC Chang-
chun Railway Vehicles in Jilin province.JIA CHUNWEN / FOR CHINA DAILYBorder
city firmly
in place
for growth
By XU XIAODAN and
LIU MINGTAI in Hunchun, JilinIt lies at the point where China,
Russia and the Democratic Peo-
ple’s Republic of Korea meet, with
the proximity of the three coun-
tries offering opportunities to tap
major cross-border markets.
The city of Hunchun, in the
Yanbian Korean autonomous
prefecture of Jilin province, is
now poised to leverage its geo-
graphical and other advantages
to ratchet up major industries
such as trade and tourism.
There are four national-level
road and railway ports in Hun-
chun that provide crucial links
with Russian and DPRK logistics
hubs. In the recent decades of
rapid development, the city gov-
ernment has invested 1.15 billion
yuan ($163.2 million) in port
infrastructure, with total customs
clearance capacity growing to 2.
million visitor numbers and 7
million metric tons of cargo a
year, according to official figures.
More than 3,000 tourists a day
from Russia alone head to
Hunchun during peak travel
periods, with port customs
authorities clearing record visits
last year, according to Zhai
Jutong, director of the adminis-
tration of Hunchun’s immigra-
tion and exit border checkpoint.
To meet the increasing num-
bers of visitors and cargos, port
authorities have also added state-
of-the art cargo and passenger
channels, while a new develop-
ment zone opened in March will
help the city push ahead as a
logistics hub in Northeast Asia for
the supply chain management,
high-end warehousing, integrat-
ed distribution and transaction
settlement sectors.
Kong Fanye, manager of cross-
border e-commerce operations
for Hunchun Smart-city Invest-
ment Management, a group that
is involved in offering warehouse
and distribution business-to-cus-
tomer services that utilize
Hunchun’s China-Russia border
resources, said business has been
brisk in the past year.
“Popular Chinese products
range from smartphones and lap-
tops to textiles and household
appliances,” he said.
The improved infrastructure
and logistics channels in recent
years are also improving Hun-
chun’s standing as a northern sea-
food distribution hub. Most of the
king crabs that China imports
from Russia to meet demand
from diners in major Chinese cit-
ies like Beijing, Shanghai and
Guangzhou, Guangdong prov-
ince, are distributed via Hun-
chun, according to trade figures.
Hunchun can serve as a model
for the innovative development
of the marine economy with its
convenient access to rich ocean
resources, according to Bayan-
qolu, Party secretary of Jilin
province.Contact the writers at
[email protected]Spared the
ravages of the ice
age, the Changbai
Mountains are
home to a diverse
range of plants
and animals from
across the globe
Green ‘gene bank’ helps
to preserve world’s f lora
Flowers carpet the shore of Tianchi Lake, a crater lake on top of the Changbai Mountains in Jilin province.PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY