The Olympic Center in Jinan, capital of Shandong province [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Shandong's social and economic growth performance has been very impressive over the past five years, while local high-quality development will gain momentum in the next few years as the province is fostering more new economic drivers," said Li Xunlei, a chief economist from Zhongtai Securities during a recent interview.

Last year, the province saw its gross domestic product (GDP) grow 3.6 percent year-on-year to 7.31 trillion yuan ($1.13 trillion). Its growth rate was also 1.3 percentage points higher than that of the whole country. 

After hitting its lowest in the first quarter of 2020, Shandong's GDP growth began to stabilize and pick up in the second quarter before maintaining its climb in the third and fourth quarter.

Li said that this shows that Shandong's development resilience has continued to strengthen.

"Shandong's economy has withstood multiple pressures and tests amid the COVID-19 pandemic and downward pressure on the global economy. The province has made major strategic progress in both its COVID response and economic and social development," Li commented.

Li noted that Shandong has made unremitting efforts to promote the upgrading of traditional industries and expand the production capacity and scale of emerging industries to fuel economic growth.

"With targeted measures to advance innovation-driven development, deepen supply-side structural reform, accelerate industrial transformation and upgrading, the province has made solid progress in high-quality development," he said.