Overview of Dalian City

Dalian Historical Overview

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Dalian is a coastal city near the end of the peninsula in southeast Liaoning Province, with a population of 5.7 million people (counting suburbs and surrounding counties).  It is the largest port in Northeast China (aka "Dongbei").  According to archaeological evidence, settlements at Dalian go back at least 6000 years.  The settlement was known as Sanshan under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and Qing Niwakou under the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) until its name was changed to Dalian in 1899. 

In the 19th century, Dalian (then Qing Niwakou) was only a small fishing village.  However, beginning in the 1880’s, the Qing government constructed bridges and fortifications with built-in cannons in the region, and set up mining camps along the northern coast of Dalian's gulf.  During the first and second Opium Wars, the British army invaded the town.  It was also a major battlefield during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and the Japanese-Russian War of 1904-5, because Port Arthur (now called Lushun, and incorporated into greater Dalian) was only a few kilometers away.  Following the settlements after the Russian-Japanese War, Dalian came under Russian and then Japanese control for 50 years, 40 of them under Japanese rule.  After the Communists came to power in 1949, Dalian as a port city in a closed society underwent little further development until after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, when Dalian began to modernize its port facilities.  In 1984, the State Council approved Dalian as a coastal open city during China's opening up to the West.  It was designated a city with a separate economic plan in 1985, giving it provincial level decision-making authority.  In the mid-90s, under then-Mayor Bo Xilai, Dalian began an ambitious undertaking to become a world-class port city on the level of Rotterdam, and a host to international events.

During his 1993-2001 tenure as Mayor of Dalian, Bo Xilai (2001-4 Governor of Liaoning, currently Minister of Commerce) began to implement radical city planning policies, building parks in vacant lots instead of housing or commercial buildings.  The residents of Dalian, who generally lived in ill-equipped, dilapidated houses, reportedly did not see how planting trees could be as important as building more homes and raising wages.  Nevertheless, Bo continued to improve the aesthetic appearance of the city, eventually transforming the center of Dalian with architectural styles reminiscent of the Mediterranean and Sweden, making it a unique city in China.  Bo's reputation as an effective and forward-thinking politician is based on his role in Dalian's transformation.

Dalian Economic Overview

(Statistics from 2007 Government Report published on March 9, 2007.  1 USD = 7.744 RMB as of March 9, 2007)

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Dalian is one of China’s five municipalities directly under the central leadership.  Its goal is to become the international shipping center of Northeast Asia by 2010.  It occupies a land area of 13,237square kilometers (5091 square miles), with 2,415 square kilometers (929 square miles) of urban area.  Dalian has six urban districts, three county level cities and one county.  The total population in Dalian is about 5.72 million in the city and adjoining districts (2006); about 57.5 percent of its population is urban. 

Key industries in Dalian are in the fields of petrochemical, metallurgy, machinery, shipbuilding as well as information technology.  Dalian is a unique model city in China with an international and globally-competitive software industry.  Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. Ltd is building a self-positioning deep-water floating drilling platform for the U.S. Nobel Group.   
 
Dalian's GDP in2006 was RMB 256.97 billion (USD 33.18 billion), a 16.5 percent increase over the previous year.  The urban citizen’s disposable income per capita is RMB 13,350 (USD 1723.92), increasing 11.3% from 2005. Farmer’s net income per capita is RMB 6,984 (USD 902.33), increasing 18.3% from 2005. 

China’s State Council has approved Dalian Dayaowan Port Area to be a Free Trade Port Area in September 2006.  It is one of the three Free Trade Port Areas in China; the other two are Yangshan in Shanghai and Dongjiang in Tianjin.   

Dalian's main foreign traders are from Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and Latin America.  The city’s 2006 total foreign trade volume was USD 31.79 billion, an increase of 24.3 percent over the previous year.  Among these, imports were USD 14.54 billion, an increase of 23.1 percent, and exports were USD 17.26 billion, an increase of 25.4 percent.  

Dalian is the sister city of the U.S. city of Oakland.  Dalian Port and Oakland Port have celebrated their 21st anniversary of establishing a sister-port relationship on September 27, 2006.