The tide of openness surges along the border, with practical action fueling development. Since 2026, leveraging its unique geographical advantages, Dehong has seized new opportunities for border area development and opening-up. Focusing on the goal of transforming and upgrading its port economy, the region has coordinated efforts in key areas such as project advancement, targeted investment attraction, foreign trade quality enhancement, and business environment optimization. It is fully committed to upgrading from a transit economy to a port economy and an industrial economy. The vitality of comprehensive opening-up continues to burst forth, with tangible industrial achievements and opening-up results accelerating high-quality development in the border region.
Building an Industrial Foundation and Empowering Clusters for Continuous Growth
This year, the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture has focused on strengthening, supplementing, and extending industrial chains. It has precisely connected with industrial transfer resources from eastern coastal regions and continuously intensified efforts in project planning and implementation, steadily accumulating momentum for industrial development. To date, the prefecture has secured the landing of 6 key industrial projects with a total investment of 700 million yuan and signed 11 new industrial projects each valued at over 100 million yuan, injecting strong momentum into the high-quality economic development of the border area.
As the main front for industrial development, the business environment in the Ruili Industrial Cooperation Park continues to improve, attracting an accelerated gathering of market entities. The park has now formed the largest textile and garment industry cluster in the province. The communication electronics sector has developed supply chains for products like speakers, LCD modules, earphones, and chargers. The equipment manufacturing industry has formed chains for motorcycles, auto parts, and more. Imported commodity processing has expanded from traditional agricultural products to categories like human hair and Chinese medicinal herbs. Since the park's launch, 197 new enterprises have registered within it, including 41 industrial enterprises above a designated size. Driven by the park's robust industrial pull, the added value of industries above a designated size in Dehong Prefecture from January to April this year increased by 36.9% year-on-year, maintaining the top growth rate in Yunnan Province for four consecutive months.
Accelerating Project Implementation to Solidify the Industrial Base
This year, Dehong Prefecture has fully pressed the "accelerator" on project construction, with a batch of key industrial projects focusing on supplementing chains, strengthening clusters, and benefiting people's livelihoods commencing and landing in a concentrated manner, laying a solid hardware foundation for industrial transformation and upgrading.
In April this year, the China-Myanmar (International) Modern Agriculture and Commerce Industrial Park processing zone officially commenced construction. Covering 121.83 acres with a total investment of 125 million yuan, the project focuses on deep processing of cross-border agricultural products between China and Myanmar. It aims to establish a complete chain for cross-border agricultural product procurement, processing, and export sales, effectively promoting the industrialization and standardization of border-area specialty agriculture and facilitating deeper cooperation in the agricultural industry between China and Myanmar.
Concurrently, the Kenbo Technology motorcycle manufacturing project, with a total investment of 250 million yuan, was successfully launched. Upon reaching full production capacity, the project is expected to produce 500,000 motorcycles annually, primarily for export markets in Southeast Asia and Africa. This further addresses gaps in Dehong's equipment manufacturing sector and improves the layout of the complete cross-border equipment manufacturing industrial chain.
In May, the Ruili Under-Forest Economy Industrial Park, with a total investment of 50.9 million yuan, officially broke ground. Leveraging Dehong's unique tropical resource advantages, the park focuses on specialty categories like Dendrobium (Shihu), genuine Chinese medicinal herbs, and under-forest coffee. It plans a complete chain encompassing deep processing, brand cultivation, and cross-border sales, promoting the deep integration of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in border-area specialty agriculture. This effectively drives local employment and income growth for border residents, empowering both rural revitalization and border area industrial development.
Simultaneously, Dehong utilized the 10th China-South Asia Expo as a national-level investment promotion platform to precisely connect with industrial-rich coastal regions like Jiangsu-Zhejiang and Fujian-Guangdong. It conducted targeted chain-based and business-led investment attraction activities, focusing on upstream and downstream supporting enterprises for its leading industries to continuously improve the industrial support system and expand industrial clusters. At this year's South Asia Expo, the Myanmar Gemstone Public Tender (China·Ruili) exhibition area made its debut, marking the official landing of the Myanmar National Gemstone Public Tender in Ruili and signaling a continuous upgrade for the jewelry industry.
Port Empowerment and Trade Quality Enhancement Drive Strong Cross-Border Foreign Trade Momentum
Leveraging the efficient customs clearance and facilitation policy advantages of Ruili Port, key enterprises in sectors like electronics, textiles, and equipment manufacturing within the prefecture's parks are operating at full capacity, with overseas orders exceeding supply. As the largest textile and garment industry cluster in Yunnan Province, park enterprises continue to advance technological upgrades for automated production lines, significantly improving intelligent and digital production levels. Overall production efficiency has increased by 25%, while labor costs have decreased by 20%, continuously enhancing the industry's core competitiveness.
The latest statistics from Kunming Customs show that in the first five months of 2026, Yunnan Province's import and export trade volume with Myanmar reached 28.64 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.1%, highlighting the continued resilience of cross-border trade along the border. Among these, Ruili Port's motorcycle exports performed notably well. In the first five months, cumulative exports reached 84,000 units with a value of 240 million yuan, representing year-on-year surges of 14 times and 18 times in volume and value, respectively. Dehong's locally manufactured products have become a new growth engine for Yunnan's exports to South and Southeast Asia.
Integrating Industry and Tourism for Mutual Empowerment, Boosting Border Cultural Tourism
Dehong promotes the deep integration and coordinated development of the port economy and the cultural tourism economy. Leveraging the recovery dividend of cross-border passenger flow, it continuously activates the border cultural tourism market. By late May 2026, the number of inbound and outbound passengers through Ruili Port had exceeded 2 million, reaching this 2-million passenger milestone 11 days earlier than the previous year. The recovery in cross-border personnel movement has effectively driven the revival of the cultural tourism industry.
Cultural tourism consumption remained strong during major festivals. During the Spring Festival holiday, Ruili city received 759,600 tourist visits, achieving comprehensive tourism revenue of 707 million yuan. During the Water-Splashing Festival, the average daily inbound and outbound passenger flow at Ruili Port exceeded 16,000 person-times, a sequential increase of 14.28%, creating a vibrant atmosphere for cross-border cultural tourism experiences. During the May Day holiday, Ruili received a total of 386,800 domestic tourist visits, with the appeal of its border cultural tourism brand continuously rising.
Currently, Dehong is fully advancing key tasks such as improving scenic area quality, fostering high-quality homestays, creating border cultural tourism routes, and innovating characteristic cultural tourism formats. It is actively cultivating new formats and scenarios for cross-border cultural tourism experiences, aiming to efficiently convert port passenger flow into cultural tourism consumption, and accelerating the construction of a new border economic pattern featuring diversified integration and coordinated development of "industrial sectors + port trade + border cultural tourism."
Optimizing Services and Upgrading Infrastructure to Continuously Improve the Business Environment
Dehong continues to deepen reforms in streamlining administration, delegating power, improving regulation, and upgrading services. Focusing on pain points for business development and difficulties in public service access, it has introduced a series of innovative reform measures around key areas such as streamlining approval processes, improving convenience services, empowering enterprise support, and upgrading service efficiency. It precisely implements various policies to benefit enterprises and ease their difficulties, striving to create a top-tier, market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized business environment.
The prefecture has comprehensively implemented a flexible "quiet period" supervision model for enterprises to minimize interference with normal production and business operations. It has innovatively launched characteristic measures to benefit the public and enterprises, such as the comprehensive insurance product "Paukphaw Friendship Insurance" and cross-border salary remittance services, addressing challenges in cross-border operations and employment. Simultaneously, it has optimized government service processes by implementing integrated one-window services for hotel establishment and launching a preferred enterprise name database, continuously enhancing the convenience of government services.
While optimizing services, Dehong continues to address infrastructure gaps, accelerating the upgrading of supporting facilities like road networks in park areas, cold chain storage, and underground pipelines. It is improving living support functions such as education, healthcare, accommodation, and commerce, comprehensively enhancing the comprehensive carrying capacity of industrial parks to undertake industrial transfer from the east and gather market entities, laying a solid foundation for high-quality industrial development in the border region.
The wind is rising along the border, and the tide is vast; gathering strength to set sail on a new journey. Currently, the superimposed advantages of Dehong's ports, parks, industries, and policies continue to be unleashed, with the momentum for border area development and opening-up steadily improving. Moving forward, Dehong will stand at a new starting point for development, continuously amplify its advantages in border area opening-up, deeply cultivate leading industries, and expand industrial clusters. It will make every effort to ensure signed projects land quickly, projects under construction commence production swiftly, and operational projects enhance efficiency rapidly, continuously activating the "multiplier effect" of the border economy. Through practical achievements in industrial quality improvement, opening-up level elevation, and development acceleration, Dehong strives to write a new chapter of high-quality development in border areas for the new era.