Yantai: From a Trillion-Yuan “Hardcore”?Industrial City to a “Capital of Performing Arts”
By Xin He
Yantai has successfully shaped a new image as a “City of Vitality.”
Amid the waving and twinkling of tens of thousands of fluorescent sticks, the city’s night sky sparkled brilliantly.
From July 5 to 6, 2025, G.E.M. I Am Gloria World Tour Yantai kicked off in the summer heat, drawing tens of thousands of fans to Yantai with a total attendance of nearly 100,000. As one of Shandong Province’s high-profile performances this summer, this event not only ignited the passion of countless fans but also became a “highlight moment” for Yantai’s cultural and tourism consumption.
This concert is a microcosm of Yantai’s strategy to create a new urban economic format through the “concert+” model.
In 2024, Yantai hosted 38 large-scale performance events, including sunrise concerts, the Yangma Island Music Festival, the Super Concert of Yin Xiong Alliance, the Beach Music Season, the Wine Coast Art Exhibition, and the New Youth Music Festival, attracting a total of 1.898 million participants and driving 1.12 billion yuan in consumption.
This year, Yantai has already held performance events such as concerts by Liu Ruoying and Angela Chang, and the Yangma Island Music Festival. High-quality events like the Chinese Film Directors’ Night and the First CMG Chinese Micro-Short Drama Awards Ceremony will also be rolled out successively.
As a traditional industrial city, why is Yantai vigorously developing a concert-driven economy?
The “Industrial Core” of a Trillion-Yuan City
2023 was an extraordinary year for Yantai.
That year, Yantai joined the “Trillion-Yuan GDP Club” for the first time, becoming the third city in Shandong Province and the 25th in China to achieve this milestone, and it stands as the first ordinary prefecture-level city in northern China to reach this level.
In China’s current economic landscape, trillion-yuan cities are crucial growth engines. For any city, surpassing a one-trillion-yuan GDP is a significant milestone. Yantai’s entry into the club signifies its transition from a leader in second-tier cities to a contender among top-tier cities, significantly elevating its urban function level and unlocking broader growth opportunities and expanded development space.
Yantai’s entry into the club is of great significance not only to itself but also to the economic development of Shandong Province and the whole country.
Since joining the club, Yantai has maintained a sound growth momentum despite a complex external environment.
In the first quarter of this year, the city’s GDP reached 258.43 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.9%, ranking first in Shandong Province.
In the first quarter, only 7 cities in China achieved a GDP growth rate exceeding 6%, with Yantai leading at 6.9%.
By industry, the primary industry added 5.29 billion yuan, up 3.6%; the secondary industry added 108.53 billion yuan, up 8.1%; and the tertiary industry added 144.61 billion yuan, up 6.1%.
Clearly, industry remains the primary engine of Yantai’s economic growth.
In the first quarter, the industry contributed 48.1% to Yantai’s GDP growth. Among them, the industrial added value above the designated size increased by 11% year-on-year, 4.5 percentage points higher than the national average. Industry still plays a significant role as the “ballast” of Yantai’s economy.
As one of the cradles of modern industry in China, Yantai has long been dominated by manufacturing and port-based economies, establishing an industrial system centered on green petrochemicals, non-ferrous and precious metals, high-end equipment, automobiles, electronic information, and deep-processed foods. Traditional industries account for over 70% of Yantai’s economy, reflecting its typical “heavy-asset” characteristics.
As a typical industrial city, Yantai has long had a disproportionately high proportion of the secondary industry, while the tertiary industry, especially the modern service industry, has developed relatively slowly. In 2024, although Yantai’s service industry accounted for 51.1% of GDP, there is still room for improvement compared with leading domestic cities, and it is also lower than that of Jinan, Qingdao and other cities in the province during the same period.
Against this backdrop, how to optimize Yantai’s economic structure, promote the growth of the service sector, and accelerate the cultivation of new drivers and advantages has become an important issue.
Concert Economy Drives the “Walking GDP”
For a long time, Yantai has formed an industrial structure dominated by traditional industries such as manufacturing. Although the industry has laid a solid foundation for urban economic development, with the economy entering a new stage, the limitations of a single industrial structure have gradually emerged, such as constraints from resources and the environment, and bottlenecks in improving industrial added value.
In this context, like many similar cities, Yantai urgently needs to find new growth drivers and promote industrial restructuring and upgrading.
In recent years, Yantai has clearly focused on expanding domestic demand and stabilizing external demand, promoting high-quality economic development.
In this process, Yantai has keenly captured the new opportunities presented by the upgrading of cultural consumption and the rise of experience economy, positioning the development of the concert-driven economy as a key breakthrough for urban economic and cultural tourism consumption transformation. Behind this strategic choice lie profound economic and social motivations.
As an important part of the modern service industry, the concert economy can effectively drive the development of related industries such as tourism, hospitality, catering, retail, and transportation, promoting the optimization of the industrial structure towards the “tertiary-secondary-primary” pattern.
In recent years, China’s offline performance market has rebounded explosively, with cross-city attendance exceeding 50%. The concert economy, through the “performance + tourism” model, has stimulated the potential of cultural tourism consumption, and is known as “walking GDP.” The industry often uses “1:4.8” to describe its driving force for consumption, meaning that every 1 yuan spent on tickets drives 4.8 yuan in surrounding consumption during the same period.
Take the Midi Music Festival held in Yantai in 2023 as an example: nearly 90% of the visitors came from outside the city, bringing 340,000 tourists and approximately 200 million yuan in tourism revenue to the Huang-Bohai New Area. Yantai’s efforts to expand and strengthen the concert economy are not impulsive but well-thought-out.
First and foremost, this is reflected in policy guidance and support.
In recent years, focusing on key areas such as cultural industries, film and television sectors, star-rated hotels, and large-scale commercial performances, Yantai has formulated and issued a package of policy documents, including Measures to Promote High-Quality Development of the Cultural Industry and Measures of Yantai to Support the Development of Film and Television Industry, continuously optimizing the policy environment.
Among them, Measures to Promote High-Quality Development of the Cultural Industry advocates to sustainably boost music festivals and concerts and strengthen Yantai’s image as a “City of Music” with fashion and vitality."
Yantai Municipal Government explicitly stated in its 2025 government work report that “we will encourage new formats such as performances, national trends, and e-sports,” taking the cultural performance industry as a key driver for service sector development.
Through hosting a series of fashionable cultural activities such as music festivals and concerts, Yantai has successfully reshaped its city branding, transforming its long-standing image as an industrial city that is “long on industrial prowess yet short on vitality.”
From an Industrial Powerhouse to a Capital of Performing Arts
Facts have proven that by hosting a series of high-standard concerts and international events and vigorously developing the cultural tourism industry, Yantai has successfully shaped a new image as a “City of Vitality.”
In 2024, with “promoting consumption and expanding domestic demand” as the fulcrum, Yantai’s cultural tourism sector delivered impressive results: both tourist arrivals and tourism revenue achieved double-digit growth, firmly ranking among the top three in Shandong province; it also won 24 national honors, injecting strong momentum into regional economic growth.
The holding of large-scale concerts and music festivals has attracted extensive media attention and coverage. The participation of numerous stars and bands, coupled with fans’ enthusiastic support, has kept Yantai frequently in the public eye. This has significantly enhanced Yantai’s urban influence and visibility, allowing more people to see its charm.
In 2024, Yantai was listed as one of the “Top 100 Destinations in Asia” by online travel platforms.
On June 20, 2025, at the “2025 Weibo Travel Night,” Yantai was awarded the title of “2024 Weibo Most Influential Domestic Tourism City,” along with 12 other popular domestic tourist cities such as Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Harbin.
Yantai’s case provides valuable experience for the transformation of traditional industrial cities. Among them, industrial synergy is an important enlightenment. Yantai has not neglected its industrial foundation because of developing the concert economy; on the contrary, through the dual-engine approach of “industry + cultural tourism,” it has achieved a more balanced and healthy development of the industrial structure.
In the first quarter of this year, 7 cities in China achieved a GDP growth rate exceeding 6%, with Yantai leading at 6.9%. This proves that Yantai’s vigorous development of the cultural tourism industry has not weakened its industrial competitiveness but has injected new vitality into the urban economy. Such a diversified industrial ecosystem is more resilient than relying solely on industry or cultural tourism.
The modernization of urban governance capacity is the foundation for the success of the concert economy. Large-scale performing arts events are a comprehensive test of a city’s capabilities in transportation, security, emergency response, and services. Through hosting a series of concerts and music festivals, Yantai has elevated its urban governance.
This improvement in governance capacity not only serves the concert economy but also benefits the daily lives of urban residents, forming a virtuous cycle of “elevating urban standards with every event hosted.”
Yantai, an industrial city, has achieved a transformation from “hard manufacturing” to “soft power” through developing the concert economy, providing a replicable model for similar cities in China.
When growing numbers of young people choose to “travel to a city” specifically for an event, it reflects not just the rejuvenation and blossoming of urban vitality, but also a passionate invitation from an industrial city to youth and the future.
