Taiyuan city, capital of North China's Shanxi province, saw strong momentum in investment promotion in 2020, with its comprehensive investment-attraction performance ranking first in the province.

Last year, there were 177 contracted projects in the city, with a total investment of 341.66 billion yuan ($52.87 billion), an increase of 18.6 percent year-on-year and a record high.

A fund of 42.18 billion yuan for fixed-asset investment among the signed investment projects was in place, accounting for 28.2 percent of the city's total fixed-asset investment.

Among the signed investment projects, 69 projects each had an investment of more than 1 billion yuan. The average investment scale of signed projects was 1.93 billion yuan, more than three times the provincial average.

The local authorities established several funds: 1 billion yuan for the industrial transformation and upgrading fund, 1 billion yuan for talent development funding and 1 billion yuan for the science and technology special fund. The intention is to attract more industrial investment and improve enterprises' core competitiveness.

One-stop, comprehensive services for project introduction and construction were offered in the city, which significantly optimized the local investment environment and the rapid start of investment projects. A total of 147 signed projects started development in the past year – a 14.3 percent rise year-on-year.

A series of high-quality industrial projects, including the Shanxi Synthetic Biological Industrial Park and Shanxi Industrial Base of the National Advanced Computing Industry Innovation Center, successively settled and started production in the city.

Taiyuan furthered regional cooperation by setting up investment promotion contact centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiamen cities and Qinghai province to expand investment promotion scope. The city has signed 64 projects in new infrastructure, new technologies, new materials, new equipment, new products and new industries through various platforms, with a total investment of 60.22 billion yuan.