In order to speed up the development of the western region, the State Council has approved the Eleventh Five-Year Plan on Western Region Development in 2006 and identified Chengddu-Chongqing, Guanzhong-Tianshui and the Northern Gulf in Guangxi Autonomous Region as strategic heights to lead and drive the western development. Yangling Demonstration Zone is of great significance to the implementation of the Plan as its geographic superiority and economic advantages in the Guangzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone.
In June, 2009, the State Council has officially approved the Guanzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone Development Program set by the National Development and Reform Commission in June, 2009. The planned area for the economic zone covers ShaanxiProvince's Xi'an, Xianyang, Tongchuan, Weinan, Baoji, as well as some counties of Shangluo, Yangling Agricultural Hi-tech Industries Demonstration Zone and administrative areas under the jurisdiction of Tianshui, Gansu Province. The program proposes to build Guanzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone into China's "strategic highland for the country's inland economic development and opening-up, demonstration base for the reform of overall planning on sci-tech resources, important centre for advances manufacturing industries and national modern agricultural hi-tech industrial zone . As a core city in the Economic Zone, Yangling enjoys each item of preferential policies set for developing the Guanzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone.
Located in the western guanzhong plain of Shaanxi Province, Yangling is 82 kilometers east to Xi'an, 86 kilometers west to Baoji, only 70 kilometers to XianyangInternationalAirport. In the Guanzhong-Tianshui Economic Zone Development Program, Yangling is identified as the city only secondary to Xi an and national modern agricultural hi-tech industrial zone. As the only national level agricultural hi-tech industrial demonstration, Yangling plays a crucial role in exploring new agricultural production systems and promoting agricultural modernization. With the focus on the demonstration of modern agricultural science and technology, the combination of producing, study and research promotion, the development of equipment manufacturing, biomedicine, food processing and agricultural trade, Yangling will certainly become the agricultural sci-tech innovation center in arid and semi-arid areas of china as well as the model for the integration of city and countryside.
In recent years, Yangling has been playing an exemplary role in such fields like modern agricultural innovation, international science and technology cooperation, modern agricultural enterprises incubation, seed breeding, standardized production, agricultural products processing, modern logistics and recreational agriculture development.
