An artificial wetland in the shape of a flower floats on a lake in the East Lake High-tech Zone of Wuhan, Hubei province. [Photo by Wang Yongsheng/For China Daily]

Editor's note: China's city cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River covering Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces has played an important role in China's economic and social development.

By 2025, the cluster will further increase its contribution to the country's economic aggregate figures and boost the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the rise of Central China as well as the country's high-quality development, according to a notification issued by the National Development and Reform Commission.

Let's take a look at the future development direction of this area and noteworthy features in the business sector during the country's 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25).

The country aims to build the city cluster into a pioneer area for transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and development of emerging industries, where industrial and supply chains are sound with obvious scale effect.

The cluster will strengthen the integration of innovation resources, strive to make breakthroughs in key generic technologies and key areas of industrial and supply chain security, and form demonstration projects for collaborative innovation.

The cluster will deepen reform of market-based allocation of factors of production, develop a high-standard market system and enhance the service level of the "dual circulation" development paradigm.

It will promote interaction and collaboration with the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Chengdu-Chongqing Twin-City Economic Circle, and develop the Hubei and Hunan Pilot Free Trade Zones and the Jiangxi inland open economic pilot zone to higher standards.

The cluster will accelerate the establishment of a mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products, strive to improve the living environment in urban and rural areas, actively implement the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and promote green development of the Yangtze Economic Belt.

The cluster will improve the quality of urban functions, comprehensively improve the quality and level of public services in both urban and rural areas and promote the joint development and sharing of social security, education and medical services.

It will also strengthen its capacity to ensure public safety, protect, inherit and carry forward the Yangtze River culture, and create a space for people to live, work and enjoy a better life.

The cluster will improve the comprehensive transportation system, strengthen energy security and water conservancy and jointly build new infrastructure with the aid of 5G and Internet Protocol version 6 technologies.

It will speed up the large-scale deployment and wider application of 5G mobile communications networks, work to expand the coverage of gigabit optical fiber access networks and carry out the commercial deployment of IPv6 and single-stack trials across the board.

The cluster will continue to improve the market-oriented and law-based international business environment and streamline items and procedures for administrative review and approval to the maximum extent possible.

The East Lake High-tech Development Zone (also known as Optics Valley of China, or OVC) has been urged in a new blueprint to play a leading role in the establishment of new-type industrialization demonstration zones, industrial coordination among cities, optimization of regional industrial chain layouts, building advanced manufacturing clusters, and pursuing breakthroughs in key generic technologies and key areas of industrial and supply chain security.

To be more specific, the function of the national top-level node for identification and resolution in Wuhan's industrial internet will be further strengthened. Wuhan has been advised to develop industrial clusters for "optics, IC, displays, terminals, and internet", and will advance the modern bio-medicine sector along with Yichang and Ezhou.

In addition, OVC's sci-tech corridor has been encouraged to pursue more cooperation with sci-tech corridors along the Ganjiang and Xiangjiang rivers.

Hubei province has been advised to double down on efforts to support its key labs, including the Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, and continue with the construction of the East Lake Science City.

The central government has made it clear that it will support Wuhan in becoming a national industrial innovation center in terms of storage, optoelectronics, digital design and manufacturing.