On November 7, a press conference in the series on Hunan's achievements during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, with a special session by Huaihua City, was held in Changsha. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Huaihua has solidly advanced the four key areas of "port, industry, city, and tourism," with its regional GDP increasing from 167.1 billion yuan in 2020 to 209.3 billion yuan in 2024, achieving an average annual growth rate of 6.3%. The inclusion of Huaihua International Land Port in the national policy system supporting the rise of the central region marks Huaihua's accelerated transformation from an "inland hinterland" to an "opening-up hub."

Over the past five years, Huaihua has successfully joined the "13+2" inter-provincial coordination and cooperation mechanism of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, with its international freight train operations ranking among the province's three major thousand-train corridors, and its number of  China-Laos trains handled consistently ranking first in the central region. The city's total import and export volume surged from 1.45 billion yuan in 2020 to 13.76 billion yuan in 2024, an eightfold increase, with foreign trade growth leading the province for three consecutive years from 2022 to 2024.

Huaihua has been accelerating the construction of a "5+10" modern industrial system, with five advantageous characteristic industries flourishing, including luggage and leather goods, traditional Chinese medicine, green mining, bamboo, and seed industries. The total output value of 10 key industrial chains grew at an average annual rate of 12.2%. Huaihua's cultural tourism industry has become a hit, with total tourist spending increasing from 34.1 billion yuan in 2020 to 60.8 billion yuan, enabling more residents to benefit from the tourism economy.

Huaihua fully leverages its unique endowments in forest resources, air quality, and hydropower resources, all of which rank first in the province, establishing five national ecological civilization construction demonstration zones and being approved as one of the first national pilot cities and the only one in the province for the mechanism of realizing ecological product value. The city has innovatively carried out trading of three types of rights—forest rights, carbon sinks, and water rights—with green loans reaching a balance of 42.5 billion yuan in 2024.

The central city of the five-province border area has taken shape, with the functions of regional centers for education, healthcare, consumption, and logistics significantly enhanced. Among these, the Greater Western Hunan Regional Medical Center has been established in Huaihua, and there are 44 A-level logistics enterprises, an increase of 733% compared to 2020. Huaihua has also introduced and implemented China's first local regulation promoting integrated development, with the central urban area's population growing from 773,000 in 2020 to 931,000, and its area expanding from 78.4 square kilometers to 93.5 square kilometers. The city's urbanization rate of permanent residents has risen to 50.9%, an increase of 3.7 percentage points from 2020.

Huaihua has achieved stable employment for 344,200 people lifted out of poverty, with the per capita disposable income of rural residents growing at an average annual rate of 9.03%. Huaihua was recognized as a city with notable performance in work-relief programs nationwide. It has built 2.68 million mu of high-standard farmland, with hybrid rice seed production area accounting for 10% of the national total. The proportion of fiscal expenditure on people's livelihoods has remained above 75%. All counties have been included in the national list of counties with basically balanced compulsory education development. Huaihua has successfully become one of the first national pilot cities for 15-minute community life circles and a national demonstration city for ethnic unity and progress, with its public security evaluation ranking first in the province for three consecutive years.

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn