Tourists visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site—Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi Province. (File Photo)
Chinadaily.com.cn (Taiyuan)— On August 11, Liu Junyi, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Datong Municipal Committee and Mayor of Datong, spoke at the first press conference of the "Kickstarting the 15th Five-Year Plan" series (Datong Special Session) held by the Publicity Department of the CPC Shanxi Provincial Committee and the Information Office of the Shanxi Provincial People's Government. "Datong continues to enhance the global influence of its flagship scenic spots, including the Yungang Grottoes, Mount Heng, the Hanging Temple, and the Ancient City of Datong," Liu stated. "We are developing all-domain, all-season, and all-age cultural and tourism industries, striving to build an internationally renowned cultural and tourism city."
As a typical resource-based city in China, Datong is breaking free from its bottleneck of over-reliance on coal, accelerating energy transition, industrial upgrading, and moderate diversification.
Liu noted that Datong is seizing opportunities in the computing power sector. Leveraging its strategic location and green electricity resources, the city is actively integrating into the national integrated computing power network and building a high-standard computing power corridor surrounding the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. This initiative is driving Datong's economic transformation from "exporting coal and electricity" to "exporting computing power, services, ecosystems, and applications."
Over the next five years, Datong will focus on four key sectors: technology (advanced manufacturing), energy, agriculture, and cultural tourism consumption. The city has outlined its development goal as "Three Cities and Three Bases"—building a City of Energy, a City of Computing Power, and a City of Culture, while establishing itself as a cluster for advanced manufacturing, a hub for high-quality agriculture and organic dryland farming, and an ecological conservation area in North China.
Datong has possessed a regional DNA of reform and innovation since ancient times, having birthed two historic historic breakthroughs: "wearing nomadic attire and practicing mounted archery" (Hufu Qishe) and "the reforms of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty." Liu emphasized that Datong will carry forward this fine tradition by comprehensively advancing deep-seated reforms and high-level openness, as well as continuously deepening reforms in key areas such as state-owned assets and enterprises, fiscal and tax finance, and the market-based allocation of production factors.
He added that Datong plans to steadily expand institutional opening-up, enhance the operational capacity of its aviation port, bonded logistics center, and cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone, and collaborate with the entire province to integrate into the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region at a deeper level and across broader fields.
Gao Xinwen, Vice Mayor of Datong, stated that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Datong continuously built an integrated "grand cultural tourism" framework. The city's tourism market achieved growth in both volume and quality, steadily making the leap from a "viral online hit" to a "long-term powerhouse."
This summer, Datong ranked 5th among domestic destinations with significant growth in travel popularity, 5th in growth rate for civil aviation travel during the summer rush, and 7th among popular destinations for long-haul summer retreats. Spending summer vacations and residing for wellness retreats in Datong has become a trend among visitors from across the country.
The recently released15th Five-Year Plan for Building a Tourism Powerhousehas designated Datong as a national key tourism city, offering major opportunities for its cultural and tourism development. Gao noted that Datong will anchor its goals on becoming an internationally renowned cultural and tourism city as well as a gateway city for tourism in Shanxi Province. The city will continue to polish its cultural tourism brands—"Capital of Culture, Capital of Cool Summer, and Capital of Cuisine"—and spare no effort in propelling the construction of Datong as a "City of Culture" to a new level.
(By Zhu Xingxin, China Daily Shanxi Bureau)
