Lixia district in Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong province, has made great headway in building a world-class urban business center while promoting high-quality development.

In the past year, the district effectively coordinated COVID-19 response and socioeconomic development, and achieved steady and healthy social and economic growth. It has ranked first for 14 consecutive years in the city's overall socioeconomic assessment for all the districts, and ranked 15th among the top 100 of the nation's most competitive urban areas in 2022.

For COVID-19 response, the district made active efforts in 2022 to increase medical resources, and it completed the upgrading of the Lixia hospital and improved the medical treatment system at the grassroots level. It also steadily promoted the vaccination for the elderly and did its utmost to protect people's safety and health.

The district unveiled 15 policies for promoting socioeconomic growth to relieve local enterprises from difficulties they had amid the pandemic, and provided more than 12 million yuan ($1.77 million) of various subsidies to relevant companies. The number of market entities reached 144,000 in 2022, ranking first among all the districts in Jinan in terms of the number of companies they had.

While carrying out more than 30 activities to promote consumption, the district distributed more than 76 million yuan to stabilize employment, benefiting 13,000 enterprises and 178,000 employees. Nearly 1,000 enterprises were organized to hold more than 100 job fairs, various subsidies worth 37.3 million yuan were provided to people with seeking jobs, and 44,000 new urban jobs were created.

The regional gross domestic product of the district is expected to increase by 5 percent in 2022, with the total volume and growth rate to lead Jinan's all districts.

In addition, the district's integrated development of industries and urban construction helped transform old growth drivers into new ones.

A bird's-eye view of Lixia. [Photo/WeChat account: touzilixia]