China's Guangdong stresses high-quality development at beginning of 2023

GUANGZHOU, China, Jan. 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Guangdong government held a grand conference on high-quality development on January 28, the first working day after the Chinese New Year holiday, and gathered more than 25 thousand major government officials and business leaders online and offline to share their plans for 2023.

"High-quality development is an inevitable path for Guangdong to achieve modernization. The province has a large population and limited resources, which means it's unwise to compete with its global counterparts on cheap land supply, product price and labor cost," Huang Kuiming, Party Chief of Guangdong, addressed at the conference.

To pursue high-quality development, Wang Weizhong, Governor of Guangdong, highlighted critical projects and platforms construction, enhancement of the real economy and the manufacturing industry, coordinated development between urban and rural areas, enhancement of the efficiency of finance serving the real economy, expansion of all-around opening up, creation of an international, market-oriented, and law-based business environment.

More specific policies and plans have been announced at the event, echoing the call on high-quality development.

Ai Xuefeng, Director General of Guangdong's Development and Reform Commission, said that in 2023, Guangdong has arranged 1530 provincial key projects with a total investment of 8.4 trillion RMB. The annual planned investment will reach 1 trillion RMB.

Guangdong has been known for its manufacturing industry worldwide with the industrial output exceeding 16 trillion RMB. More than 700 thousand manufacturers have settled in the province.

Tu Gaokun, Director General of Guangdong's Industry and Information Technology Department, said the province will boost the growth of industrial investment to above 10 percent and help 9000 industrial enterprises to upgrade technologies in 2023.

"Guangdong will focus on the 20 strategic industries and enhance the 8 industrial clusters with 1 trillion RMB output, that is, electronic information, green petrochemicals, smart home appliances, advanced materials, modern light industry and textiles, software and information services, modern agriculture and food, automobiles," said Tu.

To boost foreign economy, Zhang Jinsong, Director General of Guangdong's Commerce Department, said that Guangdong is rolling out a slew of integrated measures in foreign trade, foreign investment, foreign outsourcing, foreign economic cooperation, and overseas talent attraction.

Zhang indicated that the province had formed a working mechanism of "one-to-one" services to the top 500 foreign trade enterprises and key foreign investment projects. The province will help deal with problems in financing, employment, land use, and energy use timely and further improve and implement the policy of rewarding and subsidizing foreign investment.

As for the highly requested Canton Fair, Chu Shijia, Director of the China Foreign Trade Center, announced that the 133rd Canton Fair will resume its offline exhibition and is scheduled to open on April 15. Invitations were sent to 950,000 domestic and foreign purchasers, 177 international partners, 224 overseas embassies and consulates, 67 consulates general in Guangzhou, and more than 50 domestic investment partners.

Representatives of both domestic and foreign-funded enterprises in such fields as electronics, petrochemical and energy gave presentations and elaborated their plans to further investment in Guangdong this year.

Xu Min, CEO of P&G Greater China, said the American multinational consumer goods corporation will move its product supply chain center from Europe to Guangdong，which will cover the import and export businesses in the RCEP and Belt and Road markets. P&G entered China in 1988 and is headquartered in Guangdong. Thus far, China has become the second largest regional market of P&G while Guangdong has the company's largest production base.

Li Xingjun, GM of ExxonMobil (Huizhou) Chemical Company, revealed that his company would invest in a world-class R&D center in the Daya Bay petrochemical industrial park in Huizhou. Also, the company is considering establishing a ten-million-ton carbon capture, utilization and storage center in Daya Bay Petrochemical Zone.

As one of the major foreign-funded projects in China, ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project has fully funded 1.42 billion USD in place, and the total fixed assets investment reached 17.55 billion RMB. Currently, there are 6350 staff members on the project site.

Zheng Yongnian, professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, said high-quality development has been highlighted multiple times in major meetings of Guangdong since December, 2022. Now that all the plans are put in place, the government held the conference to ask its officials to put everything into action and achieve all the goals.

"It shows the ambition of Guangdong, China's economic power house, to lead development after China eased the travel restriction on inbound passengers and highlights the areas that the government might formulate more advantageous policies for future development. It presents great opportunities to global investors and job seekers," said Zheng.