History and Culture

On December 8, 1986, Ningbo, known as "the City of Antiquities", was declared a state-level historic and cultural city among the second group of cities in the country. Now, as one of the 99 current historic and cultural cities of the country, it is well known both at home and abroad as the origin of the Hemudu Culture, the famous port for shipping, trading and cultural exchange since the Tang and Song Dynasty, the cradle of East Zhejiang Culture, the outpost of wars against foreign invasions since the Ming and Qing Dynasty, and for the birthplace of the "Overseas Ningbo Folks" and the large number of well-preserved historic relics and remains. In August 2000, Ningbo Municipal Government summoned a meeting on the cultural activities of Ningbo, where were defined the overall requirements for cultural activities in Ningbo for the time being and for the time to come, namely, to uphold the theories of Deng Xiaoping, the guidelines of the 15th Conference of CPC and the Three Representations; to train all citizens to have their ideals, to have proper ethic conduct and to be educated and disciplined; to adhere to the principle of serving the people and socialism whole-heartedly; to let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend; to stand firmly and look out to the future, to achieve breakthroughs in the restructuring of the city's cultural profile through innovation; to turn over a new leaf in the industrialization of cultural activities and promote the coordinated development of culture, economy and society to provide a sound ideological motivation, intellectual support and cultural environment to an earlier realization of the Four Modernizations. As a nationally cited traditional cultural city, the cultural undertakings flourish in the city of Ningbo. The International Fashion Festival has been successively held in Ningbo for six years. In the 2002 year, Ningbo sponsored or co-sponsored many other major cultural activities such as the 10th Golden Rooster Festival, the Hundred Flowers Film Festival, and the Plum Award of China. Such cultural facilities as theatres, libraries and museums were extended and improved.

Medical and Public Health

Ningbo shares a long history of medical treatment. In the Remains of the Hemudu Culture dated back about 7000 years, a number of plants are found which are effective in preventing and curing some kinds of diseases. Famous traditional Chinese doctors can be found in different periods of history. Some have even left behind valuable medical books, which play a very important role in the development of the major traditional Chinese medical subjects.

Ningbo is one of cities into which western medicine was introduced at an early stage in history. Starting from the second half of 18th century, missionaries from western countries come to practice Western medicine. The first Western medical hospital Huamei Hospital, now named Ningbo No.2 Hospital, was established in 1843.

Since the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the new central government has attached great importance to the public health. Health administration bodies at all levels have been set up. Ningbo Health Bureau, under the direct leadership of Ningbo Government, is responsible for

• implementing the State's policies, laws and regulations on public health in Ningbo,
• researching and making general plans and objectives for the improvement of the city's health program,
• making plans for major diseases protection,
• exercising supervision over community public hygiene, labor hygiene and health-related products like food, medical drugs, and biological manufactures for medical purposes,
• determining qualifications of health workers and carrying out the licensing system for health services,
• following the central government's guidelines, policies and measures on civil patriotic health to carry out all-round health education and mobilize the entire people into health work,
• sticking to the integration of traditional Chinese and Western medicine to promote the development of both modern and traditional medicines,
• developing plans for the development of the city's medical personnel and for key medical subject research and education,
• organizing research into and surmounting of key medical problems,
• reinforcing health care for women and children and protecting them from serious and harmful diseases, and
• developing and promoting medical and health technology exchange and cooperation between medical organizations home and abroad.

At present, there are two medical education units in Ningbo, the Medical College of Ningbo University and Ningbo Medical School. Besides, there are 1263 medical institutions with 14653 beds, or 2.68 beds per thousand people. Specialized medical skilled workers amount to 23965, averaging 4.39 per thousand people. Amount them 9927 are doctors, averaging 1.8 per thousand people. Medical apparatus and instruments such as nuclear magnetic resonator, whole body CT, linear accelerator, large X-ray machine, digital subtraction angiographer, automatic biochemistry analyzer and color Doppler have been equipped in some hospital. Ambulances from the First Aid Center can reach any spot in the urban areas within 15 minutes after getting calls for help. In 2002, a total number of 23.2 million outpatients and emergency cases were handled in the hospitals in the city. The inpatients stayed in comprehensive last year amount to 0.2129 million cases. Critical operations like aortocoronary bypass, combined replacement of tricuspid valve, Morfan's syndrome, homogeneous variant heart transplantation were successfully performed. Cardiology departments of the major hospitals in the city performed the operation of PTCA. Departments of ontology, bone and joint surgery in Ningbo are all well known for their excellent work and have played an important part in ensuring citizens' health.

Abiding by the guideline of "Prevention priority", health organizations at different levels have taken steps to control and cure general and endemic diseases, strengthen labor hygiene, prevent radiation, and keep food products, public sites, school in sound condition. The steps have effectively helped improved the health condition of Ningbo. In 2001, the death rate of pregnant and lying-in women was 7.76 per 100,000 while that of infants was 7.06 per 1000. Major diseases that influence Ningbo citizens' life include malignancies, respiratory diseases, cerebral diseases, hearth diseases, trauma and poisoning. The life expectancy of Ningbo citizens in 73.46 years.

Port of Ningbo

In 738, Ningbo Port was put into use formally. In the Tang Dynasty (618-907), it was known as one of the three major seaports for foreign trade, along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou. In the Song Dynasty, it became one of the three major port cities for foreign trade together with Guangzhou and Quanzhou. It was declared as one of the "Five Treaty Ports" after the Opium War.

Ningbo Port is well situated at the middle of the coastline of Mainland China, just at the T-shaped joining point of north-south shipping line and the golden waterway of the Yangtze River. It is a modern port composed of Beilun (seaport), Zhenhai (estuary port) and old Ningbo harbor (inland river port) areas, with comprehensive functions and multi-level berths. The business scope of Ningbo Port includes imported iron ore, container, crude and finished oil, liquid chemical products, coal and the loading and unloading, storage and transhipment of other bulk goods. In the year of 2000, cargo throughput topped 100 million tons, enabling the port to become one of the few ports in the world, which own a cargo throughput of more than 100 mil-lion tons. In 2003, the port handled 185 million tons of cargo, ranking second in the ports of Mainland China. The TEU con-tainers handled by the port reached 2.75 million, with an increase highest of the coastal ports of Mainland China over last five years successively. There are more than 90 regular shipping lines for container between Ningbo Port and other main ports all over the world. The container liner services count 460 and more in a month.

Ningbo Port is not only a deep-water port famous all over the country, but also one of the few ports with a cargo throughput of more than 100 million tons in the world. The shallowest section of the entry channel is more than 18.2 meters deep, enough for vessels of less than 250,000 tonnages to enter freely. Huge ships of 250,000 to 300,000 tonnages can also navigate at tide. It is free from big waves and strong winds, so there are more than 350 workable days in a year. Ningbo Port is an ideal place for developing ocean-going transport to North and South America and Oceania. Up to now it has built trade and transport relations with over 560 ports of more than 90 countries and regions in the world.

Ningbo Port will further improve the functions of the 5 large bases of iron transhipment, international container transhipment, large-scale storage and transhipment for coal, crude oil, refined oil and liquid chemical products. It is targeting at a first-class deep-water hub port in the world, a main line port for international container and an important component of Shanghai international shipping centre.

Resources in Talents

Ningbo attaches importance to the establishment and improvement of talent resource floating mechanism. In June 1988, approved by the Personnel Ministry of P.R.C., Ningbo took the lead in opening the talent market and became one of the eight experimental units. After ten years' operation, in April, 1997, Ningbo, jointly with the Personnel Ministry a  nd Zhejiang Province Personnel Department, organized Chinese Ningbo Talent Market for Township Enterprises", Which has fully played a basic role of the market in respect of allocation of talent resources and was authorized by national personnel office to re-titled as Ningbo talent market in April,2003. By the end of 2002, there are totally about 40,000 units and 710,000 participants. And 110,000 persons of them have found an ideal job.

In order to meet the requirements of Ningbo's large-scale economic development, after opening to the world, Ningbo has been striving for discovering, introducing and training various kinds of outstanding talents in many ways.

First of all, it tries its best to accept college graduates and secondary technical school graduates. During 1981 and 2002, 165,000 graduates have been employed in Ningbo area. Secondly, it widely introduces all kinds of academic talents. Up to the end of 2002, kinds of talents totalled more than 90,000 and over 1200 foreign experts were engaged to work in Ningbo. Thirdly, it actively exploits local talent resources. According to incomplete statistics, the persons who received professional training totalled nearly one million.

During the past twenty years, the numbers of talents have been expanding. At the end of 1978, there were only 8,599 professional technicians in the whole city. By the end of 2002, there were 275,000 technicians and experts, which was 32 times over 1978. There were 6 national middle age and youth experts who made outstanding contributions, 208 experts who took the special allowance of the State Department, 12 technicians who made outstanding contribution in Province, 138 technicians who made outstanding contributions in Ningbo, 17 persons obtained the reward from Ningbo Municipal Government, and 1 person from Government of Zhejiang Province. In addition, 31 high-level experts have been included in the list of provincial and state talent cultivation project.

Intelligence Indraught

Ningbo Intelligence Indraught Office is an administrative department to promote the international exchange of talents and cooperation, to exploit international talent resources, to expand international talent markets and Intelligence Indraught channels. It is in charge of inviting foreign experts to work in Ningbo and sending technical and managing persons to go abroad to receive training, and it also helps the related department introduce into and popularize newly technical achievements and new breeds.

At present, the office has established business relations with over forty expert organizations and training organs of main developed countries. It can offer over 30,000 experts to be chosen and kinds of professional technicians to go abroad for training.

These years, the office has introduced over 930 foreign expert projects into Ningbo, engaged all kinds of 1200 foreign experts to come and work here, and sent more than 4000 of technicians and managers to go abroad to receive training. It introduced about 1000 kinds of new breeds in farming, animal husbandry and fishery, which brought the city marked economic results and good social benefits.

Exploitation of Talent Resources

Ningbo Talent Resource Exploitation and Service Centre is an intermediary Organization for talents exchange.

Its main functions are as follows:

1) To offer services on talent exchange: providing places for units and individuals; organizing activities to exchange all kind of talents regularly or irregularly. Through interviews between the suppliers and the demanders and their mutual option, the Service Centre offers its services in recommendation of the excellent talents to the units and gives information of employment opportunity for those qualified personnel.

2) To provide information services on talent resources: having sent up an information network system on the supply and demand of talent.

3) To give all-round personnel agency services: keeping personnel files; grading the graduates; evaluating the technical grades; accepting application for an examination; examining and investigating the political record of the persons who intend to go abroad; collecting and keeping insurance pension and public housing welfare fund and so on.

4) To exploit talent resource: conducting all kinds of training courses; introducing various kinds of talent from the marked to the enterprises

5) To evaluate the person with ability. Using the most advanced computer evaluate system, combined with judging by experts, the centre evaluates kinds of talents, recommend high-grade talents to enterprises and looks for suitable positions for talents.

6) To despatch the talented person with professional technology for various kinds of units.

7) To give advertisement in the newspaper for various kinds of units to employ talented persons.

8) To offer other intermediary services.

Chinese Services Centre for Scholarly Exchange Ningbo Branch

As the only comprehensive management and service agency which established by Ningbo Municipal People' Government for scholarly exchange, Chinese Service Centre for Scholarly Exchange Ningbo Branch(hereafter referred to as the Centre)aims to attract and encourage those overseas Chinese students to participate in Ningbo's economic construction, fully utilize their scientific and technologic expertise and foreign liaison channels. As one of the first batch eight sub-centres approved by the Chinese Service Centre for scholarly Exchange affiliated to the Ministry of Education, the Centre is an institutional organization affiliated to Ningbo Municipal Personnel Bureau and guided by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Personnel.

The major business scope is as follows: Providing overseas Chinese students and the employers with the concerned supply and demand information; going through the relevant accepting and dispatching procedures for those overseas Chinese students who intend to work in the city of Ningbo; verifying academic credentials or diplomas obtained in foreign countries and providing the concerned consultant services; acting as go-between for overseas Chinese students who wish to serve in Ningbo; going through funding procedures; providing with services for those people who wish to study abroad, Including U.K., Canada, Germany, Singapore, France, Ireland, Russia, Holland, Australia, South Africa etc.

Science and Technology

Over the last few years Ningbo has witnessed remarkable achievements as the campaign to promote the city by science and education was launched. As a result, the city is now among the technologically advanced cities of the country. In 1998, technological progress contributed 41.5% to the economic growth rate of the city. All of the 11 counties (or county-level cities) and districts under Municipal jurisdiction were cited as technically advanced county (county-level city or district) of the county, and altogether 7 counties (or county-level cities) and districts as technically advanced counties of the province. Currently there are 23 technological research and development organizations throughout the city, 2 of which are under jurisdiction of the Ministries, 17 under Municipal jurisdiction, 1 under industrial jurisdiction and 3 under the jurisdiction of counties (county-level cities) or districts. Technological development has experienced a breakthrough particularly after the kickoff of No.1 Project of promoting the city by science and education in 1999.

Currently the city boasts 92 hi-tech enterprises, 28 of which have annual output value exceeding RMB100,000,000 and 13 of which are State-level high-tech enterprises. So far 29 technological research centres for enterprises of provincial or municipal level (8 of which are of provincial level) and 18 key laboratories of provincial or municipal level (4 of which are of provincial level) have been established.

As approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ningbo is the "State-level Base for New Material Industrialization", "State-level Key City for Promoting Trade by Science and Technology", "State-level Entrepreneurship Base for Returned Students" and "State-level Key exemplary city for CAD". Ningbo Technological Park is the first high-tech industrial park of provincial level in Zhejiang.

Ningbo has long been praised as "the State of Civilization". Its scientific and educational undertakings have been fairly developed in China. There are 82 academicians of Ningbo origin who serve in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences. In 2002, the output value of hi-tech products reached 61.37 billion Yuan RMB. Ningbo supports 13 institutions of higher education and 2,874 full-time schools of various kinds with a student body of 1.09 million. The South Park of Higher Education in use and the North Park of Higher Education under construction will form a modern university city dominated in education & research, and characterized with ecological environment, sharing sources and entrepreneurship on sci-tech.