The launch of the world's first iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park in Yangzhou will utilize technology to narrate Chinese stories, offering visitors an extraordinary journey into the world of film and television IP. The opening of Sam's Club, a high-end membership-only store under the world's top 500 enterprise Wal-Mart, highlights the continued powerful appeal of Yangzhou's "first-store" economy. The Jiangsu Smart Logistics Center project, a joint investment by Shanghai Yimidida Supply Chain Technology Co., Ltd. and Yangzhou Sanxiao Logistics Co., Ltd., is advancing rapidly... In recent years, a cohort of industry leaders have not only consistently made significant investments in Yangzhou but have also unanimously selected the city as their preferred location for new product launches, initial technology trials, and business model innovation. Why are these leading service enterprises choosing to establish a foothold in Yangzhou? An in-depth investigation was conducted.
Industry giants are effectively voting with their feet to secure a central role. Recently, the iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park illuminated an outdoor naked-eye 3D giant screen in Yangzhou, signaling its entry into the final pre-opening sprint phase. "The three adorable creatures on the massive screen穿梭 from a Tang Dynasty street market to a western desert and a fantastical cloud realm, exuding a strong tech vibe," described local resident Wang Ping, recounting the scene where iQiyi's brand mascots "Kiki," "Wiwi," and "Xiao Qi" debuted on the naked-eye 3D screen, delivering an immersive entertainment experience akin to "stepping into a dream cinematic world." Visual spectacles like a "gigantic golden cudgel piercing through the screen" and the "mythical beast Qiongqi galloping across the sky" drew crowds of citizens and tourists who stopped to take photos. Zhang Hang, Senior Vice President of iQiyi Inc., stated that innovatively creating this outdoor naked-eye 3D screen with technological means not only brings Yangzhou its first outdoor visual landmark themed around film and television IP but also aims to immerse visitors in the fantastical world crafted by the iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park even before they enter.
This amusement park is not a traditional "behemoth" theme park in the conventional sense. As the world's first iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park, it has chosen a differentiated path—a compact, highly interactive, and rapidly iterating indoor immersive experience space designed to create a new venue centered around immersive cultural entertainment experiences driven by film and television IP. Furthermore, the park will undergo customized development integrating Yangzhou's rich historical and cultural resources, offering citizens and tourists a novel cultural experience.
With the global-first iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park anchoring the east and the retail giant Sam's Club standing prominently in the west, these two landmarks sketch a new panorama of Yangzhou's thriving service industry. As one of the highlight projects of Yangzhou's first-store economy, Sam's Club has reshaped local consumption patterns and demonstrated robust vitality since its opening in November 2025. Data from the opening week of Sam's Club's Yangzhou debut store revealed: foot traffic exceeded 180,000人次, with single-day visitor numbers surpassing 30,000 on multiple occasions, and sales ranking among the top for its stores within the province... While superficially, Sam's establishment appears to be a strategic move leveraging its "first-store" status to create a commercial "closed loop," on a deeper level, it represents Yangzhou's profound exploration into further stimulating consumption, enhancing the city's economic tier, and optimizing the regional business environment. In 2025, the city's total retail sales of consumer goods reached 196.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.5%, surpassing the provincial average by 2.2 percentage points. It is precisely this market potential that fuels Sam's Club's confidence in sinking roots in Yangzhou.
What underpins the confidence of these giants in partnering with Yangzhou? From Sam's Club igniting a consumption boom to the iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park poised for launch; from the highly efficient commencement of operations at J&T Express's Smart Supply Chain Industrial Park to the rise of three hundred-billion-yuan-level computing power center clusters... A succession of leading service enterprises have chosen Yangzhou, painting a vivid picture of this ancient city and modern industries moving towards each other in a mutually beneficial embrace.
The favor shown by service industry giants is inextricably linked to Yangzhou's profound cultural tourism heritage and fertile ground for consumption. The decision by iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park to locate in Yangzhou stems from the city's rich historical底蕴, its vibrant cultural tourism industry, and its open, innovative urban character, which align perfectly with the park's philosophy of "reinterpreting Chinese stories through technology." The "excellence" of the business environment coupled with the "speed" of project implementation serves as the critical code for attracting enterprises to put down roots. The successful establishment of J&T Express's first self-built smart supply chain industrial park in Baoying, from land approval to operational commencement, set an industry benchmark for J&T Express as the "fastest land acquisition, fastest construction, and fastest production" project. Behind this remarkable "Baoying Speed" lies the seamless collaboration and highly efficient services provided by local government departments.
Yangzhou's得天独厚的 geographical advantages and forward-looking industrial ecosystem further position it as a preferred location for service industry giants aiming to dominate future sectors. Leveraging its status as a hub node within the Yangtze River Delta, the Yizheng Big Data Industrial Park has attracted three hundred-billion-yuan-level data centers from Tencent, China Mobile, and China Telecom, with planned cabinet capacity exceeding 250,000 racks, forming the largest data center cluster in East China. In the lifestyle services sector, projects like Meituan, Hema, and M Membership Stores are flourishing at multiple locations; meanwhile, in the producer services track, areas such as logistics, commerce, technology, and finance are showcasing numerous highlights. From consumer markets to digital computing power, and from the integration of culture and tourism to scientific innovation and R&D, the diverse industrial ecosystem built by Yangzhou provides enterprises with vast space for development.
Attracting "leading enterprises" and gathering "chain masters," Yangzhou's investment promotion efforts are delivering a continuous run of successes. The influx of major service industry projects is backed by Yangzhou's solid strides in precise investment attraction and activating development momentum. Lu Anya, Director of the Yangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission, explained that Yangzhou prioritizes service industry investment promotion, vigorously advancing the recruitment of high-quality projects and strengthening the investment promotion team structure. Centered around the "9+6" service industry system, the city has established a mechanism for linked promotion across subdivided industrial fields, clarifying the working principle that "managing an industry entails managing its development, and managing development entails managing investment promotion," with the development and reform department taking the lead and various industrial authorities collaborating effectively. Simultaneously, the city has innovated with a "department + state-owned enterprise + district" investment promotion model, which both strengthens municipal-level coordination and guidance and reinforces the primary responsibility of counties (cities, districts), consolidating investment promotion forces into a powerful fist.
Precise investment promotion enables targeted efforts. "We meticulously drafted a service industry investment promotion map, focusing on 15细分 fields, clearly defining industrial segments, regional layouts, and target enterprises for each, and established dual databases for target enterprises and available building carriers, achieving 'searching according to the map and working with a chart,'" introduced Zhu Feng, Deputy Director of the Municipal Development and Reform Commission. In the producer services sector, projects from logistics leaders like J&T Express and YTO Express have commenced operations, while hardcore projects such as the Aviation Technology Laboratory and the three major computing power centers have taken root. In the lifestyle services sector, a cluster of first-store openings including Sam's Club, Hema, and M Membership Stores, alongside the accelerated development of new cultural tourism landmarks like the world's first iQiyi Inc. Amusement Park, have formed a pattern where producer services and lifestyle services advance together like two wings.
Yangzhou proactively "goes out" to knock on doors for investment and provides comprehensive "service to the end" to ensure enterprise settlement and stability. "Yangzhou targets service industry agglomeration areas like the Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area, with municipal leaders leading 'quarterly-themed' investment promotion activities; in 2025, service industry teams conducted over 500 external visits," reported the head of the Service Industry Department at the Municipal Development and Reform Commission. From the "Shanghai Investment Week" to the Slender West Lake Modern Service Industry Promotion Conference, a series of thematic events have built bridges for cooperation, facilitating strategic partnerships with leading enterprises such as SF Express, COFCO, and Alibaba. Concurrently, Yangzhou implements a "full lifecycle" service approach, constructing a comprehensive tracking system from contract signing to operational commencement, ensuring that projects are not only attracted but also retained and nurtured for successful development.
An impressive report card testifies to the effectiveness of these investment promotion efforts: In 2025, Yangzhou newly signed 356 major service industry projects each valued over 100 million yuan; 55 projects were selected as provincial-level key service industry projects, with both the quantity and the annual planned investment ranking second in the province, while the increment ranked first provincially. All 55 projects commenced construction, achieving 131% of the annual investment plan. The growing number of leading service enterprises partnering with Yangzhou is infusing this millennia-old city with renewed vitality and dynamism.
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