Qingdao recently released and started to implement a three-year (2025-2027) action plan to accelerate the construction of “China’s wellness center”. As indicated in the action plan, Qingdao will leverage its resource endowments and distinctive strengths in an effort to build a famous wellness city nearby the sea and mountains as well as a vigorous and healthy bay area, take advantage of such high-level platforms as University of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences to prioritize “wellness across the city, health across all ages”, launch the new campaign in six dimensions, including fostering a new environment for healthy habitation, developing new forms of health services and unleashing new drivers of growth for health industry, to seek at a faster pace in-depth integration between real estate, medical care, wellness and cultural tourism, enable cities in the bay area to play a greater guiding role, and build itself into “China’s wellness center” with international reach.

The Action Plan has put forward the following goals for the “China’s wellness center” construction initiative. By 2027, solid breakthroughs will be made in healthy habitation, business model innovation, industrial concentration, scenario creation, and quality improvement, 10 featured industrial parks and 30 high-quality wellness communities will be built, 100 embedded service facilities such as residential communities combing medical care, rehabilitation and elderly care will be put in place, the life and health sector will see a market size of RMB100 bln, a system friendly to all ages will be put up, which is also healthy, comfortable, diversified and inclusive, and Qingdao will be largely built into a high-quality healthy living site, a hub of rehabilitation industry-education integration and innovation, and an international wellness and residence destination. (Yang Guang)