Awesome province

Guangdong Province holds something most spectacular in the Chinese economy. It is like the heartbeat of the nation’s economy with 1/9th of the GDP. And it has sustained this tradition of economy trailblazer for 25 straight years. You can rightly say that Guangdong wags China.

Guangzhou, capital of the province, is China’s third largest city after Shanghai and Beijing with a population of about 17m. If you visit Shanghai and Guangzhou, you would hardly make out the difference or say which of the two is more elevated.

At Guangzhou in a reception by the Foreign Affairs Office of Guangdong Province, Mr. Luo Jun, head of the office said the GDP of the province outweighs those of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong put together, and it generated a staggering revenue in excess of $1tr in 2014 and 2015 with import volumes also around such figures for the two years. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Zhuhai are all port cities because Guangdong is located at the shores of the Pacific Ocean and the Pearl River harbor and in one of the busiest maritime tracks of the world. The zone has been designated the world’s largest industrial cluster.

Shenzhen wonder

After the designation of Shenzhen as the first China Special Economic Zone to experiment the opening up and reform, it transformed speedily to a mega city with over 10m population. You can call Shenzhen the City Where it All Started in China’s economic experiment headed by the deep mind of Deng Xiaoping.

Shenzhen

From the 13th floor of Asta Hotel at the centre of the city, I surveyed the skyline and could not believe that is what has been accomplished in 35 years. At the city museum, the photo of Deng Xiaoping is displayed standing by his black limousine that is said to be made in China. Today, Shenzhen, that dream from the fecund mind is the biggest buzz in China’s vast economic progress. It has got the reputation of the most innovative city in China with high-tech firms like the Huawei that provides broadband band and internet hardware services to over 52 major service providers in the world. Tencent, the platform that powers the ubiquitous Wechat and QQ is also in Shenzhen. The city is home to ZTE, BYD, BGI, the drone giant, DJI, and has to her credit in the past 11 years a patent pool of 10,000 innovations and sustained record of the most innovative city of China for the same length of time. At least 4742 national hi-tech enterprises are located in Shenzhen. This is the feat of a town of 35,000 population prior to the economic experiment.

In a meeting with Yao Weizhi, the Deputy Director General of the Foreign Affairs Office, he sounded upbeat about further exploits on the way for Shenzhen and said since the creation of the city, its economy has grown 6531 times at an average of 27.6% GDP growth in 35 years with economic volume bigger than Portugal, Finland and some other European countries, with plans to catch up soon with Singapore. Five of the Fortune 500 list of world’s top business firms are native to Shenzhen. All these landmark achievements, he said are built around major universities in the city that power its innovations, and these contribute more than 35% of the city’s revenue and has more than 50% of China’s patented innovations every year with a booming stock exchange, and second largest wrist watch production in the world after Switzerland. As the city retains 25% of China’s total exports for years, last year, $13b worth of her exports went to Africa. 

Shenzhen skyline