Wang Jingjun had planned to move his company from Shenzhen to his home town in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. He never expected that he would instead choose Yanshan County in Yunnan Province’s Wenshan Prefecture.

Now, Wang Jingjun feels that he made the right decision. After less than three months of preparation, the relocated company went into operation. Its first batch of products, 1,500 vehicle-mounted 4G smart large-screen navigation sets, rolled off the assembly line and headed for markets nationwide. Better still, 16 upstream and downstream companies have also settled in the county.

In recent years, Yanshan County, formerly dominated by agriculture, has become a strong location for industrial production. 58 companies including Mattel, Foxconn Technology, C&C Electric Power Technology and Jingdin Uniform now have operations there.

 “Our investment attraction efforts used to be indiscriminate. But today, by attracting specific industrial chains, we have accelerated the shift of our industrial structure from low and middle end to the high end,” said Li Hong, secretary of Yanshan County Party Committee.

In order to blaze a trail of leap-frog development, the frontier province of Yunnan has sped up the development of its industrial infrastructure. The results are new breakthroughs in the development of intelligent terminals, new energy vehicles and other technology sectors.

For a very long time, the economy of Yunnan Province was mainly based on tobacco, raw materials, energy production and other traditional industries. Intelligent manufacturing, information technology and other emerging industries now show strong momentum, but they account for a relatively small proportion of the province’s overall economy. Faced with the dual pressure of growing and upgrading the economy, the province strives to promote its own industrial transformation.

Five years into this process, Yunnan has cumulatively cut its pig iron production capacity by 1.56 million tons and crude steel production by 4.26 million tons. The elimination of substandard steel production has been reduced by six million tons, while coal production has decreased by 37.76 million tons. Meanwhile, a total of  118 “zombie enterprises” have been eliminated. Over the same time, the province has actively looked to transform and upgrade its traditional industries while accelerating innovation-driven development.