Guo said the provincial government is doing its best to improve the livelihoods of residents.

The government helped 6.65 million rural workers find jobs in cities and offered 5.94 million new vacancies to urban residents. The per capita disposable income of its urban residents has risen by an annual average growth rate of 8 percent while the net income of rural residents has grown by 10.1 percent.

Shandong currently has 13 national high-tech industrial zones, 1,427 provincial-level or above company-owned technology centers and 35 engineering research centers. Expenditure on research and development accounted for more than 2.2 percent of Shandong's GDP in 2015, up from more than 1.7 percent in 2011.

"During the past five years, Shandong made significant progress in opening-up and international cooperation," said Guo.

According to statistics from the Shandong provincial department of commerce, China built 13 State-level overseas economic and trade cooperation zones by the end of the year, three of which are backed by Shandong. They are the Sino-Russian Industry and Trade Cooperation zone, the Haier-Yoruba Economic Park in Pakistan and the Central European Trade and Logistics Cooperation Zone in Hungary.

Shandong's volume of exports and imports combined was valued at $241.75 billion last year, up 27.8 percent over 2010.

More than 6,800 foreign-invested projects were launched in Shandong in the past five years. The province's total used foreign capital was $69.1 billion, about 1.5 times more than the previous five years.

Shandong has also attracted 149 Fortune Global 500 companies to establish branches in the province.

One example is the $2-billion IT industry base and software talent training center invested by US IT giant Hewlett-Packard in Jining. Following HP's step, about 150 leading IT companies such as Oracle, IBM and Siemens also decided to invest in the city. "The provincial government introduced a variety of measures to attract overseas investors during the past five years. A series of investment promotion activities were held annually in China's Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as South Korea and Japan," said Wang Hua, chief of the provincial department of commerce.

Shandong has held the annual trade and investment promotion meeting in Hong Kong for seven years, which has become an important platform to showcase Shandong's resources and industrial advantages to Hong Kong investors.