OREANDA-NEWS. November 29, 2012. Boundary changes took place in the Hefei Economic Zone, with Dingyuan county included in the zone while counties of Wuwei, Hexian and Hanshan excluded, local authorities said at a meeting late Wednesday.

The Office for Developing Hefei Economic Zone issued a draft statement on the adjustment of the zone's range at the high-level meeting, announcing that Dingyuan, a county to the northeast of Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, will be a new member of the zone while Wuwei, Hexian and Hanshan counties are to be removed from the map of the region due to an administrative division reshuffle last year.

In the reshuffle, Chaohu,a prefectural-level city bordering Hefei, was split into three parts, which were then absorbed by its neighbors: Hefei, Wuhu and Ma'anshan. As a result, Wuwei and Hexian counties are now under the jurisdiction of Wuhu, and Hanshan belongs to Ma'anshan.

Prior to that adjustment of administrative divisions, the Hefei Economic Zone consisted of cities of Hefei, Huainan, Lu'an and Chaohu as well as Tongcheng, a county-level city under Anqing.

After the reshuffle, the Office for Developing Hefei Economic Zone decided to make a few adjustments to the map of the zone to ensure all cooperation agreements would remain effective and relevant work would go on smoothly. The decision was also spurred by the room for further development of the zone.

Out of a few candidates, Dingyuan county was the only one to be newly added to the zone, Zhang Shaochun, director of the Anhui Provincial Development and Reform Commission said at the meeting.

The entry was attributed to the county's acceleration of urban-rural development, increasingly solid foundations for agriculture, industry and other sectors, and overall growth in commerce, tourism and social undertaking, according to Wang Chengshan, head of the county.

The Hefei Economic Zone is now made up of Hefei, Huainan, Lu'an, Tongcheng and Dingyuan, covering an area of 36,519 square kilometers and with a population of 18.4 million. Its gross domestic product (GDP) reached 544 billion yuan (USD 86 billion) in 2011, or 36 percent of the province's total.