[Ferro-Alloys.com] Tongchuan, an industrial city and former coal production base in Shaanxi province, northwest China, needs to increase technological and conceptual innovation to achieve high-quality development, the top city official has said.

"In the past, traditional industries created value for us," said Yang Changya, secretary of Tongchuan Municipal Party Committee. "The data of economic growth is very good, but it is a backward mode of production. We must remove it through reform to achieve scientific development and high-quality development."

Tongchuan is a typical resource-based city which has prospered from coal, but its transformation and development are being forced by the exhaustion of coal resources.

"In recent years, Tongchuan's determination to reduce coal capacity has been very big and strong," Yang Changya said.

According to statistics, since 2016, Tongchuan has shut down 22 local coal mines, accounting for half of the total number of coal mines in the city. This has eliminated 11.48 million tons of 'backward' coal production capacity, which in turn accounts for 39.6 percent of the total coal production capacity of the city.

At the same time, Tongchuan city has improved the quality of existing coal production capacity through the trusteeship of large state-owned coal enterprises and other methods. The implementation of coal capacity reduction has promoted the optimization of industrial structure, and the proportion of non-coal industry has reached 88 percent.

"There is no backward industry, only backward production capacity. Traditional industries are not necessarily backward industries," the Party secretary pointed out.

"Under current scientific and technological conditions, we cannot do without coal." Yang said that there is still room for the transformation and upgrading of the Tongchuan coal industry, reducing pollution through safe and clean production, and achieving greater benefits through the technological transformation of production links.

Therefore, Tongchuan always regards technological innovation as the driving force of transformation and upgrading. On the one hand, the original backward coal production capacity will be eliminated and shut down; on the other hand, the safe, clean production and comprehensive utilization of coal will be promoted through innovation.

Yang said Tongchuan is the hometown of Sun Simiao, known as the king of medicine in Chinese history. In recent years, Tongchuan, taking the Sun Simiao traditional Chinese Medicine Culture Festival as its platform, introduced traditional Chinese medicine hospitals, businesses, and research institutes to carry out the cultivation and processing of traditional Chinese medicine, and made a lot of progress.

"Shaanxi is a big manufacturing province, which plans to produce three million complete vehicles, and three million complete vehicles cannot do without accessories," said Yang Changya. Tongchuan is committed to supporting Shaanxi manufacturing, relying on the traditional coal, electricity and aluminum industries, and vigorously developing the aviation aluminum industry.

Yang said that in recent years, Tongchuan has also issued opinions on accelerating the industrialization of building assembly and promoting the development of prefabricated buildings, developing new environmentally-friendly building materials, prefabricated building materials and other industries, and completed a number of key projects.

Next, Tongchuan will continue to introduce policies to support the development of green building materials and prefabricated buildings, as well as promoting the green development of the building materials industry, the Party secretary said. (Xinhua)

• [Editor:kangmingfei]