Tide rises for Xiamen International Cruise Home Port

The Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival and the Golden Rooster Awards will open in Xiamen on November 1. This year’s four-day festival will feature opening and award ceremonies, film screenings, academic forums, the Golden Rooster Film Market, film industry study seminars, the Golden Rooster Film Investment Conference and the Golden Rooster Cross-Strait and Hong Kong and Macau Youth Short Film Season.

This year’s Golden Rooster International Film Exhibition and the Golden Rooster Chinese Language Film Exhibition will focus on submissions from BRICS countries, Belt and Road Initiative participants and Xiamen’s international sister cities. Films from dozens of countries will be in competition.

The heads of major global film festival committees and film artists from places such as New Zealand, Poland and the U.S. will conduct film-based cultural exchange activities.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently released its annual Global Innovation Index Report. Xiamen rose 11 places to the 80th position overall.

WIPO debuted its Global Innovation Index in 2007. It added in 2017 its technology cluster rankings, which are based on factors such as technological output, innovation quality (patent application volume) and scientific publication output.

Xiamen in 2022 saw a net increase of 806 national high-tech enterprises, bringing its total to more than 3,600 firms. In the first six months of the year the revenue of 725 national high-tech enterprises grew by more than 50 percent year-on-year. A total of 461 enterprises reported year-on-year revenue growth exceeding 100 percent.

More than 500 dancers from across the country gathered in Haicang to participate in the three-day Xiamen Dance Team Union Street Dance Elite Invitational Competition. The competition is an annual event organized by local fans. It has been held for nine consecutive years.

The Xiamen-Gulangyu Strait Crossing Race hit the waters last Saturday. More than 1,000 swimmers swam from Gulangyu’s Haoyue Garden beach to Xiamen's Heping wharf, covering a distance of 1,000 meters.

Swimmers from across the country went through a selection test to receive an invitation from the organizing committee. Athletes from Anhui, Fujian, Hubei, Henan, Jiangxi and Sichuan as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan attended the event. The race included 110 participants aged between the ages of 14 and 19 and nearly 100 participants aged 60 and above.

The Xiamen Sports Center last week hosted the closing ceremony of the 21st annual Xiamen Games. The event began in May and included a total of 78 events. A record-high 15,000 athletes from 21 delegations competed for roughly 1,200 gold medals.

City officials recently announced a suite of measures designed to promote the local development of the AI industry. Officials said the suite of 19 measures will bolster computing power supply, support quality improvement and efficiency enhancement, foster innovative scenario applications, and optimize the development environment. Local authorities added that the measures include incentives, subsidies and other means of support, all of which are intended to propel the high-quality growth of the IA industry within the city.

The Xiamen Rail Transit Group officially opened last week the Huli Park TOD Subway Apartment Complex. The complex is the company's first transit oriented development, a form of development that includes long-term rental apartments. The Huli Park TOD subway apartments are close to the Line Three Huarong Road Station and Huli Park Station. The facility includes 1,369 long-term rental apartments, 5,500 square meters of commercial facilities and 721 parking spaces.

Representatives from the city's Public Facilities and Landscaping Bureau announced last week that the Haicang South Avenue upgrade and reconstruction project between Maqing and Cangjiang roads is under accelerated construction. The provincial and municipal key project is scheduled to open next year. The project starts at Maqing road in the north and extends to Cangjiang road in the south. The route covers a total length of 3.6 kilometers. Officials said that the elevated route is an important cargo transportation channel for the Haicang port area.