Government support helps companies in park develop

Visitors to Shandong Zhongdong Culture Media are particularly attracted to cartoon characters from the cartoons Happy Piggy, The Elf of Radish and Super Bao.

Located in the Weifang Software Park, on the east coast of China, Shandong Zhongdong Culture Media is one of the largest and best 3-D production teams in China. The company focuses on cartoon-related sectors such as original cartoon games and cartoon films and advertising. E Yupeng, CEO of Shandong Zhongdong Culture Media, said his company might not have seen such fast development without local government support.

"Local government has given us favorable policies on tax and land use to help us start our business," said E.

The company has created several cartoon films including Happy Piggy, The Elf of Radish and Super Bao. It has built relationships with animation studios in Singapore, Germany, South Korea and France to enhance its animation outsourcing business.

Weifang, a city better known for its cultural traditions such as kite making, has made efforts to develop its software industry in recent years.

The city has spent about 12.5 billion yuan ($2 billion) developing a software park, which is located in the Weifang High-Tech Industrial Development Zone.

The park consists of five sectors - software development, a call center, an e-commerce trade base, an animation base and a base for surveying, mapping and geography-related data.

To provide better services for companies, the park has built public technology platforms, including an IBM smart software development platform and a middleware platform. Infrastructure, including hotels and apartments for workers, has also been built in the park.

The park has developed into a top-ranking, internationalized and innovation-oriented facility for Weifang's high-tech industry.

The park has been awarded several national and provincial titles, including National Torch Program Software Industrial Base, National Demonstration Base for E-commerce Trade, National Demonstration Base for Copyright, National Demonstration Base for Geographic Information Industry, Shandong Provincial Base for Industrial Internet of Things and Shandong Provincial Base for Outsourcing Service Industry. Currently, there are 211 companies and research organizations with facilities and branches in the park. They include Pactera Technology International, SuperMap Software, Shandong Newocean Software, China Zhengyuan Geomatics, Shandong Zhongdong Culture Media and Weifang Lovett Homes.

Weifang Lovett Homes is the first knowledge process outsourcing company in Shandong. The company has designed more than 500 houses in Houston.

zhaoruixue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/24/2015 page6)