The opening of Changchun 2027 Winter Universiade is less than 200 days away. Its organization framework of "one host city with the whole supportive metropolitan area" has become the most vivid example showcasing the development of the Changchun Modern Metropolitan Area.

The cross-regional coordination, resource exchange and collaborative governance in the event support are not only a practical exercise in overall coordination of a major event, but also a concrete manifestation of Jilin Province's efforts to promote the metropolitan area's development, break the isolated growth model, address the longstanding drawbacks in regional development, and reshape the logic of spatial development across the entire region.

 

For a long time, the revitalization of northeast China has been stuck in a series of deep-seated structural dilemmas hard to break through.

How can the central city transform its role from "single-city prosperity" to "region-wide empowerment?" How can city clusters break the "isolated island dilemma" and realize the coordinated leap toward "organic integration"? How can the factor allocation overcome fragmentation in development and achieve optimal distribution across the region?

The construction of the Changchun Modern Metropolitan Area represents a Jilin approach and a northeast China model, providing answers to the key questions of coordinated regional revitalization in the new era.

Breaking the Deadlock: Reshaping Urban Growth from "One City's Exclusive Prosperity" to "the Area's Collective Progress"

The bottleneck of regional development lies not in resource endowments, but rather in the cognitive barriers and institutional inertia.

An outdated development model is simply incapable of supporting the new pattern of revitalization across the entire region.

For a time, cities and counties across Jilin Province developed in isolation. Their industry layouts were "comprehensive yet small." While these industries appeared to flourish everywhere, resources and strengths were actually scattered and offset each other, making it difficult to form the collective strength of industrial clusters for competing at the national level. This is the underlying logic behind the planning and construction of the Changchun Modern Metropolitan Area: not obsessed over the expansion of a single city, but pursuing the overall enhancement of the entire region's capacity; not dwelling on the short-term gains and losses of local interests, but anchoring the long-term, win-win future of the entire region.

The metropolitan area has abandoned the extensive, sprawling expansion through a new spatial layout of "one center, three clusters, five belts, and one corridor." Its development positioning has achieved a fundamental leap: moving away from a model of "self-centered agglomeration and growth" to the core strategic mission of "breaking through as a leading hub and driving the growth of surrounding clusters", actively removing administrative barriers and reconstructing the industrial division across the entire region.

A transformation in development pattern reshapes the regional landscape.

Changchun is focusing on key sectors such as scientific and technological innovation, new energy, and modern services. Meanwhile, the cities of Jilin, Siping and Liaoyuan are making differentiated industrial arrangements based on their respective resource endowments. Across these regions, cities and counties coordinate efforts to complement and strengthen industrial chains as an integrated whole.

County economies have become the major pillar of coordinated development.

The metropolitan area covers 29,700 square kilometers, of which the county area is 21,500 square kilometers, accounting for more than 70% of the whole area. The combined economic output of counties under Changchun's jurisdiction exceeded 200 billion yuan, with their growth rate exceeding the citywide average for two consecutive years. Among those county-level regions, Gongzhuling continues to lead the province in comprehensive strength. Industrial cooperation is flourishing across multiple areas: Shuangyang District has partnered with Dongfeng County, Liaoyuan, to bolster their distinctive sika deer industry; Chaoyang District has teamed up with Tiedong District, Siping, to develop the medicine and health sector; and Changchun New Area has joined forces with Jilin Economic & Technological Development Area to pioneer breakthroughs in new materials, among others.

Today, the metropolitan area has established a new development paradigm led by core hub industries, supported by surrounding supplementary sectors, and fueled by coordinated progress in the whole region. This marks a decisive shift away from the previous fragmented situation where localities developed in isolation and pursued their own agendas.

Empowering via Transportation: Reconstructing the Factor Flow Paradigm Across the Region from "Connected Roads" to "Integrated Networks"

Physical connectivity lays the foundation, but institutional and conceptual integration is the key.

The metropolitan area's development is often viewed through a superficial perspective, with attention focused mainly on transportation connectivity and geographic proximity.

The most profound change in the metropolitan area lies in the fact that transportation integration reduces physical distance, while institutional integration bridges the deep development gap.

Currently, transportation infrastructure development in the metropolitan area is advancing at a faster pace with improved quality.

The extension line of Dongnanhu Avenue in Changchun has fully opened, smoothing the integrated transportation link between Changchun and Jilin; the expressways in the metropolitan area form a "two-ring, nine-line" pattern; the construction of Changchun-Yushu Expressway has been steadily advanced, and the preliminary work of major projects such as Changchun Longjia International Airport Phase III and Changchun-Siping-Liaoyuan-Tonghua High-speed Railway has landed efficiently. Among them, the Changchun Longjia International Airport Phase III will, after the completion, become the first comprehensive transportation hub in northeast China to offer seamless transfer among air, railway and metro, with an annual passenger throughput of 38 million, building a multi-level transportation network with smooth internal and external connection and broader regional coverage.

Improving transportation infrastructure is just the starting point. The core is to leverage physical links to drive deeper integration across markets, industries, and governance, breaking away from the model of isolated urban development.

Effective transportation enhances industrial and people-to-people connectivity.

Transport infrastructure connectivity continues to break down administrative barriers, turning cross-regional cooperation from a policy-driven requirement into a market-driven, industry-demanded, and people-oriented norm, thereby laying a solid foundation for the high-quality development of the metropolitan area.

 

Industrial Development: Reshaping Region-Wide Allocation of New Quality Productive Forces from "Single Industry" to "Industrial Chain Clusters"

Industries are the core competitiveness of the metropolitan area, yet they also present a challenge on how to strike a balance in coordinated regional development.

Strengthening competitiveness does not mean exclusive control over industries; industrial clustering does not mean market monopoly; nor does integrated development mean regional uniformity. The development of the Changchun Modern Metropolitan Area adheres to the principles of balanced industrial collaboration: maintaining firm control over the top tier of the industrial chain and the sources of innovation, while simultaneously opening up supportive and collaborative space across the entire region, enabling the four cities to both share the dividends of industrial upgrading and jointly shoulder the mission of revitalization and development.

In short, our goal is to break internal involution via division of labor, and strengthen competitiveness via industrial clustering.

Currently, building on the metropolitan area's industrial foundation and resource endowments, and with leading enterprises like FAW and CRRC Changchun, the region has preliminarily cultivated two distinct industrial clusters: cross-regional intelligent connected NEV and components, and advanced rail transit equipment. Driven by Haoyue Group, the beef cattle industry is scaling up operations to over 200,000 head, extending the industrial chain from breeding to refined processing and brand management, while the intensive processing of agricultural products cluster has also seen rising competitiveness. Meanwhile, Changchun, Songyuan, and Baicheng have been designated as national hydrogen energy pilot zones, jointly advancing a hydrogen energy industry corridor that lays a solid foundation for clean energy industry development.

Guided by the principles of smart, green, and integrated development, the metropolitan area has now established a coordinated industrial framework that features differentiated positioning, complementary strengths, and interconnected synergy.  

Only with high-level innovation can industrial development gain depth and solidity.

In sci-tech innovation, the metropolitan area breaks through geographical constraints of "local innovation for local benefit." Leveraging a region-wide innovation alliance, it opens up top-tier research platforms, pilot-scale testing facilities, and incubation ecosystems, and promotes the precise matching of high-quality innovations, such as Chang Guang Satellite, optoelectronic information, and advanced materials, to optimal application scenarios across the four cities in Jilin Province. With innovation originating in Changchun and industrial growth radiating across the entire region, this approach effectively addresses the common challenge of inland cities characterized by "robust innovation in the central city, inadequate transformation across the region, excellence in limited area, and uneven overall development."

With primary industries strengthening the foundation, secondary industries anchoring development, and tertiary industries driving circulation, the metropolitan area has built an integrated modern industrial ecosystem marked by seamless interlocking, hierarchical advancement, and dynamic optimization.

Benefiting the People: Reshaping the Regional Urban-Rural Value System from "Resource Monopoly" to "Citywide Inclusive Benefits"

People's well-being is the ultimate benchmark of the metropolitan area's integrated development.

The most profound transformation of integration is the removal of administrative barriers in public services to ensure equitable accessibility, allowing development gains to bridge urban-rural divides and benefit the residents across the entire region. In the past, high-quality education, healthcare, and social security resources were heavily concentrated in Changchun, the provincial capital, resulting in significant gaps in public service standards between urban and rural areas and among different cities. Consequently, the city boundaries residents perceived were essentially the institutional boundaries of public services.

The ultimate goal of development actually is the inclusive benefit for the people.

Through the joint efforts of relevant regions and departments, on June 30, 142 items for "intra-metropolitan area government services" in the Changchun Modern Metropolitan Area were launched on schedule, and are gradually being expanded to "intra-provincial government services." To date, the province has cumulatively processed 120,000 such transactions. High-demand procedures that had long remained unavailable for cross-city handling are now accessible within the metropolitan area after its approval.

For example, medical insurance transfer procedures now feature simplified "one-document processing." Residents throughout the metropolitan area can complete transfer and continuation procedures at any medical insurance service window across the four cities by presenting their identity card, electronic medical insurance certificate, or social security card.

Besides, outpatient services now feature streamlined cross-city access without advance registration. Residents can receive ordinary outpatient treatment across the metropolitan area without prior filing procedures, with medication purchases at designated institutions directly settled through their medical insurance.

Furthermore, mutual recognition of clinical test results has been established across the region. To date, 112 secondary public hospitals have established cloud-based imaging systems, and 186 medical institutions now meet mutual recognition standards and 321 test items are covered under the recognition framework. This has cumulatively saved the metropolitan residents nearly 20 million yuan in medical expenses.

The development of the Changchun Modern Metropolitan Area reflects a clear vision: a metropolitan area's vitality is not about one city's solo performance, but the flourishing of the whole region; and the province's revitalization is ultimately defined not by its core city's prosperity, but by the palpable benefits felt by millions of people.

From breaking down administrative barriers to reshaping the regional landscape, and from individual breakthroughs to systemic transformation, the province is forging the most stable, dynamic, and growth-oriented core engine for northeast China's revitalization. This is driven by a dialectical development approach that combines the leadership of a central growth pole, coordinated region-wide action, and symbiotic progress throughout the entire region. In the broader drive for coordinated regional development in the new era, Jilin is writing a brand-new chapter of rejuvenation for the land of the Changbai Mountains and the Songhua River.

Source: Jilin Daily  Editor: Liu Jiadi