Ningbo, in the north-east of Zhejiang at the tip of Hangzhou Bay, has served as a port since China first began extensive seafaring in the Tang Dynasty. It was one of the “Treaty Ports” that China was forced to open to foreign trade in 1842, after the First Opium War.

Zhoushan is Zhejiang’s smallest prefectural-level city. It occupies the archipelago and island group off the east coast of Ningbo. There are hundreds of islands, of which more than 100 are inhabited.

Both Ningbo and Zhoushan have extensive deep-water port facilities. The ports have been combined under the management of Zhejiang Provincial Seaport Investment & Operation Group, an SOE with more than 30,000 employees. Its activities include port operation, shipping services, finance, development, and construction. At the end of 2022, the total assets of the group reached RMB176 billion, making it one of the most important SOEs in Zhejiang Province.

Moganshan is a perfect demonstration of how well China in general, and Zhejiang in particular, have done over the last 20 years in creating prosperous communities in rural areas. Moganshan has advantages in comparison to other more remote rural communities, in its proximity to the prosperous centre of Hangzhou, and the fact that it has a long history as a tourist resort – it was a preferred leisure destination for a largely expat population as far back as the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. But it has exploited these advantages to the full, and now serves as a model for what can be achieved in China, and for what other communities can hope to achieve as long as they continue to follow the path of modernisation and rural revitalisation.

Zhejiang is one of the most developed provinces in China, and was one of the quickest to take advantage of reform and opening up. Its economic aggregate surpassed 1 trillion yuan in 2004 and 5 trillion yuan in 2017, and rose to 8.26 trillion yuan in 2023. Its per capita GDP had already exceeded 10,000 US dollars in 2012, and rose to 17,745 US dollars in 2023. Rapid economic and social development has given the people of Zhejiang a steady improvement in living standards. The gap between urban and rural incomes has narrowed to a ratio of 1.9 to 1, making Zhejiang one of the provinces with the smallest urban-rural income gap in China. 

I'm David Ferguson. In the summer of 2023, I was invited to write anew book on the development experience of Zhejiang Province. Zhejiang has undergone a remarkable transformation, particularly in the two decades since the turn of the century.

For historical, cultural, and social reasons that I will try to explore in this program,over the centuries Zhejiang has always been a vigorous center of entrepreneurship, and its people have ranged far and wide across China and through out the wider world in pursuit of opportunities.