BEIJING - China's equipment manufacturing watchdog and marine affairs regulator decided Thursday to work together to further exploit the marine economy.

The Ministry of Industry and Information reached agreement with the State Oceanic Administration to cooperate on improving the quality of ships and other marine engineering equipment to better exploit ocean resources and improve utilization of sea water and marine biological medicine.

Marine economy is playing an increasing role in growth. South China's Guangdong province has kept an average growth rate over 10 percent in its marine economy for the past five years. Coastal provinces such as Shandong and Fujian all aim to extract more growth from the sea in the next five years.