- Q1 inflows more than double as city leans on industrial clusters
- Nearly 90% of projects tied to Zhejiang’s “415x” strategy
Ningbo secured 192 industrial projects worth more than 100 million yuan ($14.65 million) each in the first quarter, attracting 72.74 billion yuan in investment, more than doubling from a year earlier as the city ramped up efforts to build advanced manufacturing clusters.
About 90% of the projects fall under Zhejiang’s “415X” framework, which groups industries into four world-class sectors, 15 provincial clusters and a pipeline of emerging fields.
Manufacturing investment rose 12.2% year-on-year, accounting for 27.1% of fixed-asset investment—both record highs.
Officials attributed the growth to a three-pronged approach: supply-chain-focused investment targeting key industry leaders, fund-driven attraction using large industrial funds, and “scenario-based” investment leveraging real-world testing environments such as ports and factories.
The decision by Ningbo Qiushui Semiconductor (宁波秋水半导体) to set up operations in Ningbo illustrates the approach. The company, which produces Micro LED display chips for applications including automotive lighting, AR glasses and projection, chose the city after discovering it already had more than 10 downstream clients there.
Rather than competing on subsidies, Ningbo highlighted existing industrial ecosystem, prompting the company to commit to the location, according to officials.
In another example, Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, the world’s busiest cargo hub, opened its container yards to quadruped robots from Unitree (宇树科技) for container identification tasks.
The deployment helped attract a related emergency-response project by the company, with total investment of 1.24 billion yuan.
The city is focusing on six priority supply chains, including smart connected vehicles, intelligent logistics, high-end equipment, low-altitude economy, AI-related industries, and new energy and environmental technologies.
In addition to external investment, Ningbo added 128 domestically generated projects above 100 million yuan in the quarter, with planned investment of 53.15 billion yuan. It also broke ground on 102 such projects totaling 64.24 billion yuan, up 13.3% from a year earlier.
