The Shenyang Finance and Trade Development Zone was founded in 1992, and is the only other finance and trade-specific special development zone in China apart from the Lujiazui Finance & Trade Zone in Shanghai. It is situated on the proposed Shenyang Central Urban Corridor around the Shenyang North Railway Station, and covers an area of. The zone has completed over 46 large projects, comprising over 60 multifunctional landmark buildings with a total floor area of, worth over 38 billion yuan of investment capital. The current plan is to construct over 100 high-end commercial buildings, with 17 above, 5 above and 2 above in height. The Shenyang International Finance Center in particular, which broke ground in 2008, if ever completed would become China's tallest skyscraper north of the Yangtze River. So far the zone has attracted 42 foreign banks and non-bank financial institutions as well as over 130 company headquarters and financial intermediary enterprises. It has become the sample zone of international finance and modern service trade, as well as the regional finance, trade and information center of Northeast China.
Shenyang Economic & Technological Development Zone
The Shenyang Economic Technological Development Zone is located in Tiexi District, southwest of downtown Shenyang. The zone area was original part of the suburban Yuhong District, and was annexed out to establish a special development zone in June 1988, made a national development zone in April 1993, and merged into the Tiexi District in June 2002. It covers an area of, and is considered the starting point of the Shenxi Industrial Corridor. The SETDZ's GDP grew 19.51% annually and reached 83.65 billion yuan in 2010, accounting for nearly 16.7% of Shenyang's total GDP. The export value increased 1.98% to US$1.6 billion, while the utilized FDI rose 1.73% to US$924 million. Its major industries are equipment manufacturing, automobiles, auto parts, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Equipment manufacturing is the strongest industry in the ETDZ, as Shenyang is a traditional industrial base of equipment manufacturing, include major companies like Northern Heavy Industries Group, Shenyang North Traffic Heavy Industry Group, Shenyang Machine Tool Corp, Tebian Electric Apparatus and Shenyang Blower Works. The industry's total value added output in 2010 amounted to 118.76 billion yuan, accounting for 50% of the city's industrial GDP. The ETDZ's chemical industry focuses on petrochemicals, chloralkali processing, fine chemicals and specialty rubber, with major investors like Shenyang Chemical Corp and BASF, as well as a planned industrial output exceeding 200 billion yuan in 2015. Auto parts manufacturing is also a major industry with many domestic and international manufacturers like Daimler Chrysler, and the ETDZ plans to increase this number to 300 in 2013 with a total industrial output of 20 billion yuan. Based on the SETDZ, a new neighboring zone called Tiexi Industrial New Town was established to its south, purposed to develop modern service industry with Carrefour, Metro Group and Tesco being the major investors. In 2006, more land was annexed from the Yuhong District to establish the Xi River Economic Zone, and all three new zones merged to become the Tiexi New District.
