The State Council, on January 20, 2021, formally granted Qiyang, the county-level city status from its former Qiyang County status. The administrative region of Qiyang City and the residence of the people’s government will remain unchanged. Administratively, it will be directly under the jurisdiction of the Hunan Provincial People’s Government, and supervised by the Yongzhou Municipal People’s Government. The city has jurisdiction over 20 towns, 3 townships, and 3 neighborhoods. There are 523 villages and 82 neighborhood committees, with a total area of 2,538 square kilometers and a total population of 1,052,600.
Qiyang is located between Yongzhou City and Hengyang City. It is at the junction of a corridor zone connecting the two major geographic plates of “Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan (CTZ) City Cluster” and “Southern Hunan”. It has convenient transportation and connects southern Hunan, northern Guangxi, and northern Guangdong. Qiyang’s new county-level city status is in line with the national and provincial development strategies. This will be conducive to giving full play to its geographical advantages to match up with CTZ urban agglomeration; undertaking the industrial transfer of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area; and, optimizing the urban system structure in the border regions of Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi. It will be good for nurturing new small and medium-sized cities to improve the level of urbanization development in the city. It will also be beneficial to promoting rural dwellers with stable employment in urban areas to localize their residency, and accelerating the integration of urban and rural development in Qiyang.
The approval is an important opportunity for Qiyang to speed up high-quality development. It is necessary to adhere to the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era; implement the spirit of his important speeches made when inspecting Hunan; focus on the new development stage, act on the new development philosophy and accelerate the establishment of the new development paradigm. Qiyang must accelerate building itself a high-quality industrial cluster, a high-level opening-up area, and a fine-looking ecological and livable region, contributing to the “Three Highlands and Four New Missions” strategy implementation and a modern new Hunan construction.
This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.
Translator: Yu Jiangjiang
Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn
