Ningbo, Zhejiang province saw 18.5 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) in service outsourcing revenue in the first half of 2019, up 10.35 percent year-on-year, according to the city's commerce bureau.

Ningbo, one of the 31 service outsourcing demonstration cities named by the Ministry of Commerce, was home to nearly 1,000 service outsourcing enterprises with more than 50,000 employees by the end of June. The service outsourcing industry is becoming increasingly important to the city's opening up.

Hefeng Creative Square, a landmark famous for its service outsourcing industry in Ningbo [Photo/IC]

Wang Yiming, founder of a local design enterprise and winner of the Red Dot Design Award, said every businessman in the area of foreign trade dreams of building his own brand. This encourages original equipment manufacturers to transform into original design manufacturers. This transformation will boost the development of the service outsourcing industry, he added.

The agglomerations of Ningbo's service outsourcing enterprises have been progressing nicely in recent years thanks to the construction of the city's four major demonstration zones, including Hefeng Creative Square and the city's software and service outsourcing industrial park.

The service outsourcing enterprises in the four zones cover many areas, including industrial design, software development and animation. In the past five years, the executed service outsourcing volume in the four demonstration parks has accounted for more than half of the city's total.