Projects worth 56.7 billion yuan (about 8.6 billion U.S. dollars) in total were launched on Friday in a China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) demonstration zone in east China.

Twenty major projects in the areas of infrastructure, equipment manufacturing, international logistics, trade, two-way investment, business and cultural exchanges, and bio-medicine were launched simultaneously in the China-SCO local economic cooperation demonstration zone in Qingdao, Shandong Province.

Sherali Saidamir Jonon, deputy secretary-general of the SCO Secretariat, sent his congratulations through a video on Friday, saying the commencement of the projects marks a new stage of development in the construction of the SCO demonstration zone.

China proposed to build the demonstration zone in June 2018 when the 18th SCO Summit took place in Qingdao. Construction on the zone started in September 2018.

It has attracted various well-known companies for its superiority in location, transportation, and business environment in the Jiaozhou Economic and Technological Development Zone in Qingdao.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com chose the zone as home to its new intelligent industrial park. Fan Jinglin, a manager of the project, said the company plans to build a top smart logistics center here, depending on the zone's cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence technologies, and supply chain.

Muhammad Rumman Ahmed, a counselor in charge of SCO affairs of the Pakistani Embassy in Beijing, said that with the demonstration zone, economic and trade cooperation among SCO countries and countries along the Belt and Road will become increasingly close.

The SCO was established in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan joined as full members in 2017. Enditem