Location
Shandong is located in the coastal region of east China. Covering an area of 157,100 square kilometers and exercising administration over 17 cities and 140 counties (cities, districts), Shandong is home to 94.17 million people. To the east, Shandong faces the vast Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea. To the west, Shandong is connected with the widespread central plain. To the south, Shandong is linked to Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province and Shanghai City. To the north, Shandong leads to Beijing, Tianjin and Tanggu. Moreover, Shandong faces Japan and South Korea across the sea.
Climate

Shandong is located in the temperate warm zone featuring a semi-humid monsoon climate. The average temperature over the year is 11-14 degrees Celsius and the annual average rainfall is 680-950 mm.

Resources
Ocean Resources    With a coastline of 3,024 kilometers and beach and tidal-flat areas of 3,000 square kilometers and offshore area of 170,000 square kilometers, Shandong has rich brine resources and abounds in more than 600 kinds of fish, shrimps, crabs, shellfish and algae. In terms of output of these products, Shandong ranks in the forefront nationwide.

Mineral Resources    Shandong is an important base of resources and energy in China. Thus far, among the 150 kinds of minerals discovered in Shandong, the reserves of 55 kinds, such as petroleum, coal, gold, gypsum, graphite, and lime-stone, rank in the forefront nationwide. Shengli Oilfield is the second largest oilfield in China and Yankuang Group is one of the 10 largest coal bases throughout the country.

Biological Resources   Shandong has an enormous number of biological species. There are more than 3,100 kinds of plants and 450 kinds of terrestrial wild vertebrates. The number of terrestrial wild vertebrates, especially the insect species, ranks in top place among the same species nationwide.

Tourism Resources
Shandong has rich tourism resources. Throughout the province, there are 307 tourism attractions validated as A+ tourism sites, 101 cultural relic sites under the national major protection, and 29 Excellent Tourist Cities of China. There are famous wonders such as Mount Tai—a World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Qufu—a World Cultural Heritage, Penglai—the Fairyland on Earth, and Baotu Spring—the No. 1 Spring under Heaven.
Residential Environment
With beautiful mountains and waters, Shandong has distinct seasons, faithful folk custom and harmonious social environment. Public establishments and entertainment facilities are available in the cities. Weihai City has been granted the Habitat Scroll of Honour Award by the UN-HABITAT. Qingdao City and Yantai City have won the Human Habitat Environment Prize of China. And 12 cities have been named as “National Hygiene City.”
Infrastructure
Railways  Shandong has a railway network with a transport kilometrage of more than 3,000 kilometers. Jinan Railway Station is an important railway hub station.
Highways   The above-county-level cities in Shandong are all connected by highways. The highways open to traffic are 221,000 kilometers in the year of 2008, among which 4,285 kilometers are expressways. With respect to both kilometrage open to traffic and surface quality, Shandong ranks in the forefront nationwide.

①The bullet train in motion ②Expressway
Aviation   Shandong now has eight passenger and freight airports. More than 300 scheduled aviation routes have been opened. The airports in Jinan, Qingdao, Yantai and Weihai are all international airports.

Harbors

    Shandong has seven coastal harbors with annual freight handling capacity of 658 million tons in the year of 2008 and oceangoing navigation lines leading to more than 140 countries and regions. The annual handling capacity of Qingdao Harbor is 300 million tons with a container transport capacity of 10.02 million TEU, making Qingdao Harbor rank among the world’s top 10 harbors. The annual handling capacity of either Rizhao Harbor or Yantai Harbor exceeds 100 million tons.

①Yantai Harbor ②Rizhao Harbor ③Qingdao Harbor

Post and Telecommunications

    In Shandong, there are 24.521 million fixed telephone subscribers with a popularization rate of 27.2 percent and 46.117 million mobile phone subscribers with a popularization rate of 49.2 percent.

Electric Power

    The installed capacity of electric power is 56,000MW, which provides ample electric power supply.

①Guohua Ruifeng (Rongcheng Wind Power Generation Plant)

②Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The main stadium for the 11th National Games

　Science, Technology and Education

Currently, Shandong Province has more than 1,800 R&D institutions at various levels, 15 national engineering technical research centers, 3 national key labs and 82 provincial key labs, and 5 enterprise technological labs at the national level. Throughout the province, there are 35 members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Engineering and 2.34 million professional technicians working for enterprises. In 2008, Shandong secured 2,330 various scientific achievements, 26 of which were granted the National Scientific and Technological Award, and 26,688 were granted patents. There are 114 universities and colleges with a total enrolment of 1.53 million students.

　Medical and Public Health

There are 75,000 medical care institutions in Shandong Province, among which there are 3,084 hospitals and healthcare centers, 178 epidemic prevention institutions, 150 maternity and childcare institutions, offering a total of 292,000 beds and employing 354,000 health workers.
Social Security
Shandong has established the minimum living security system and medical assistance system in both urban and rural areas. In 2008, throughout the province, the number of people covered by the insurances of basic pension, medical care, unemployment, industrial injuries and birth reached 12.608 million, 12.662 million, 8.641 million, 8.65 million and 6.38 million respectively. In the countryside, 11 million peasants have participated in the social pension insurance and 63.578 million in the new rural medical care cooperative insurance.

Shandong now has 119 various troupes, 92

performance venues, 157 artistic and cultural centers, 87 museums, 164 archive establishments, and 145 public libraries. Every year, more than 8,540 kinds of books, 85 kinds of newspapers and 262 journals are published. The comprehensive population coverage rate of radio and television has hit more than 97.6%.
Shandong is a sports powerhouse. In the fields of track and field, gymnastics, table-tennis, martial arts, swimming, weightlifting, shooting, sailing, and football, Shandong has powerful strength. At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, athletes from Shandong won five gold medals, three silver medals, and three bronze medals. In 2009, Shandong will host the 11th National Games.

The sailing events of the Beijing Olympic Games were held in Qingdao

　Comprehensive Strength
In 2008, the GDP of Shandong hit 3.1 trillion yuan, ranking the second nationwide. The local fiscal revenues reached 195.69 billion yuan and fixed asset investment amounted to 1.544 trillion yuan. The import and export volume totalled $158.14 billion. Foreign investment attracted to Shandong amounted to $8.2 billion. New contracts worth $7.54 billion were signed for export of labor services and 247 overseas enterprises or institutions were newly approved. At present, Shandong has established trade and economic ties with more than 200 countries and regions.

①The vehicle production line of China National Heavy-duty Truck Group Co., Ltd.
②Completed Dongyue automobiles roll off the line.

　Industry & Construction
Shandong has established a well-based industrial system which is complete in range with such advantageous industries as steel, automobile, shipbuilding, petrochemical, light industry, textile, non-ferrous metal, equipment manufacturing and electronics. The industrial added value reached 1.672 trillion yuan in 2008. The outputs of 47 kinds of industrial products, such as refrigerators, household freezers, agricultural machinery, engineering machinery, heavy-duty trucks, motorcycles, machine-made paper and cardboard rank the first place nationwide. Machinery and equipment, electrical appliances and electronic products, textile products, garments, steel products and containers are the major exports of Shandong Province. A large number of brands, such as Haier, HiSense, Tsingtao Beer, Changyu, Inspur, Dongyue and Sinotruk are famous at home and abroad. More than 130 of the Fortune 500 companies, such as Shell, Siemens, Samsung, HP, Metro, Peugeot, Unilever, Mitsubishi, and Lucent-Alcatel have their business presence in Shandong. There are 151 construction enterprises with certificates for overseas projects in Shandong Province. Five Shandong companies, including Shandong Electric Power Construction Corp., Qingjian Group Co., Ltd, Weihai International Economic & Technical Cooperative Co., Ltd, SEPCOIII Electric Power Construction Corporation, and Shandong Hongchang Road and Bridge Engineering Co., ltd, rank in the top 225 International Contractors of Engineering News-Record.

①Weihai Samjin Shipbuilding ②The Haier refrigerator production line
③Nanshan Aluminium ④Weichai Diesel 

①Dongyue Chemical Industry ②The H steel bar production line of Laigang
③Inspur Electronics ④Weiqiao Textile
  Service Industry
Finance and Insurance   There are 198 banking institutions in Shandong, nine of which are foreign-funded bank branches or representative offices. There are 49 insurance entities, 4,763 branch institutions of various insurance companies, and 129 intermediary agents as legal person institutions.

Storage and Logistics   Shandong has more than 3,000 enterprises involved in logistics. Besides such large Chinese-funded logistics enterprises as China National Materials Storage and Transportation Corporation (CMST) and China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO), many foreign-funded enterprises, such as Maersk Logistics, Itochu, Hanjin Shipping and Singamas, have also settled down in Shandong.

Commerce    In 2008, Shandong’s retail sales volume of social consumption goods totalled 1.038 trillion yuan. There were 483 commodity trading markets with annual turnover over 100 million yuan each, and 251 foreign-invested enterprises involved in wholesale and retail were approved.

Software   Shandong has 11 software parks at the national or provincial levels, among which Qilusoft Park is one of the national 11 key software industrial parks and a national software export base. Qingdao Software Park is a software industrial base of the national Torch Plan. Among Shandong’s enterprises involved in software, 11 rank among China’s top 100 in the software industry. Jinan is a “National Service Outsourcing Base City.”

Intermediary Agent Service Shandong has 495 accounting firms and 821 law firms.

　Agriculture

Shandong is an important yield region of grain, cotton and edible oil as well as an important base in China for aquatic products, fruit, animal husbandry products and vegetables. In 2008, the agricultural added value reached 169.73 billion yuan, with total output of grain, vegetables, fruits, meat, aquatic products amounting to 42.61 million tons, 86.35 million tons, 13.96 million tons, 6.60 million tons and 7.49 million tons respectively. There are 8.7 million mu of pollution-free agriculture production bases and 7.2 million mu of green food bases. The export volume of agricultural produces of Shandong accounts for a quarter of the nation’s total.

①Heze peony  ②Tea park   ③Greenhouse  plantation

　Economic Zones and Parks

Shandong has 171 economic zones and parks above provincial level, including three national-level economic and technological development zones, five national-level hi-tech development zones, one bonded port, six export processing zones and 156 provincial-level economic development zones, which are the key areas for foreign investment attraction and foreign cooperation.

①Qingdao Economic and Technological Development Zone
②Yantai Economic and Technological Development Zone 
③Weihai Economic and Technological  Development Zone

In the near future, Shandong will speed up the construction of Shandong Peninsular Blue Economic Region, the Yellow River Delta High-Efficiency Ecological Economic Region and Shandong Peninsular High-End Industrial Cluster, as well as implement the adjustment and revitalization plans of ten key industries covering automobile, iron and steel, electronic information, shipbuilding, textiles, light industry, equipment manufacturing, nonferrous metals, chemical industry and logistics.

 Key Investment Fields
Equipment Manufacturing   

Mainly including automobile, shipbuilding, track transportation, electronic information equipment, engineering machinery, machine tools, complete sets of power generation, transformation and transmission equipment, energy conservation and environmental protection equipment, light industry and textile machinery, modern agricultural machinery, combustion engine, complete sets of large-scale coal and petroleum exploration equipment, heavy-duty equipment, petrochemical equipment, machinery for processing building-materials and equipment for producing new materials.

High-Technology Mainly including electronic information, biotech, new material, energy conservation and new energy.

Infrastructure   Mainly including electrification of Beijing-Kowloon Railway Shandong section, Qingdao-Yantai-Weihai-Rongcheng intercity railway, Qingzhou-Linshu expressway, light rail transportation in Jinan, subway in Qingdao, up-grading of Weihai Airport and Rizhao Port wharf with an annual freight handling capacity of 300 thousand tons.

Modern Service Sector Mainly including service outsourcing, banking and insurance, R&D and designing, information service, cultural and creative industry, software development, community service, and tourism.

Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Mainly including renewable energy, nuclear power, pumped-storage power station, wind power, bioenergy, solar energy and complementary energy power generation.

Modern Agriculture Mainly including “green” vegetables, animal husbandry, aquiculture, forestry and timber processing industry, floriculture, biotechnology, fine variety and species cultivation and breeding.

Standing at the new starting point, Shandong will continue to implement the scientific outlook on development, open itself wider to the outside world, speed up transformation of work direction, and, with a scientific and pragmatic attitude, take initiatives to make utmost efforts to build up a powerful province of economy and culture so as to fulfill the goal of enriching the people and invigorating the province.