Nanyang in Central China's Henan province is continuing its journey to be an advanced industrial city in the near future.

The city government plans to invest 43.98 billion yuan ($6.59 billion) in 100 carefully-selected industrial projects, according to a press conference held by the Nanyang Industry and Information Technology Commission on Aug 31.

The projects comprise of 40 in equipment manufacturing, 30 in new energy, 18 in electronic information and 12 in textiles.

The Nanyang government is giving policy priority to the growth of 89 local key industrial enterprises, cooperation with enterprises at Zhongguancun (often referred to as China's Silicon Valley) in Beijing, and support for intelligent manufacturing.

Up to now, 52 enterprises have received technology innovation sponsorships totaling $7.49 million. By the end of 2017, Nanyang is expected to initiate the initial public offerings (IPO) of more than two corporations as well as complete two or three provincial-level smart plants. In terms of industrial scale, Nanyang is determined to establish at least 30 enterprises with above 1 billion yuan in annual revenue and five industrial clusters with billion-dollar-scale.

Nanyang has also published its mid-term development goal. By 2020, the proportion of advanced manufacturing value added over large manufacturing value added will surpass 60 percent; the number of national-level high-tech enterprises will exceed 100; and the proportion of intelligent manufacturing output over equipment manufacturing output will be above 20 percent. In particular, there will be 350 newly-added industrial robots, 12 smart workshops and six smart factories in the city.

The Nanyang government aims for the city to become a national optoelectronics industrial base, a national textile manufacturing base as well as a national model city of new energy in a few years' time.