The Guangzhou municipal Party committee and municipal government held the city’s high-quality development conference on Jan. 28, 2023. This conference rallied the whole city’s tremendous strength around the goals of high-quality development through new dynamic sources of growth and competitive advantages. As a national central city, the core engine of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the provincial capital, Guangzhou earnestly explores its approach to Chinese modernization. The efforts are guided by the principle that promoting high-quality development is the fundamental solution and the only way forward for the city.
The real economy is pivotal for building the strategic advantages of Guangzhou’s future development. Building on the 2022 Guangzhou Municipal Government Work Report, which for the first time proposed “building a city that stands on manufacturing,” the 2023 Guangzhou Municipal Government Work Report listed “firmly putting industry first, building a city that stands on manufacturing and accelerating the creation of a modern industrial system” as the foremost of the city’s ten priority tasks. In the past decade, the GDP of Guangzhou has surpassed three 500-billion-yuan milestones, its economy accounting for nearly 1/4 of the provincial GDP.
At present, Guangzhou is committed to transforming from a city rich in scientific research resources into one known for its scientific and technological innovation and its efficiency in turning such innovation into economic growth. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster has been the world’s second-largest on the Global Innovation Index for three consecutive years. Guangzhou has risen to the tenth place on Nature Index: Science Cities. Guangzhou’s continuous progress in the global innovation scene attests to the city’s strategic harnessing of its technological strength to lead high-quality development.
In recent years, as part of its efforts to improve the city’s functions and core competitiveness to meet high standards, Guangzhou has insisted on building an international transportation hub. The passenger throughput of its Baiyun International Airport has ranked first in the country for two consecutive years, and the operating mileage of Guangzhou Metro has consistently ranked third in the country. Today, as its urban functional layout is constantly optimized and its role as a comprehensive international transportation hub consolidated and improved, Guangzhou is striving to forge a megacity’s path to modernization with Guangzhou’s characteristics.
Today, Guangzhou is mobilizing the whole city to boost its Nansha district’s opening up, investment quantity, and economic activity density, concentrating its efforts on building the first start-up areas. The move is part of the city’s stepped-up construction of a major strategic platform based in the Greater Bay Area, coordinating with Hong Kong and Macao and facing the world, which will inject strong momentum into the city’s high-quality development. With the implementation of the Nansha Overall Plan gathering pace, Guangzhou is fast becoming an important international logistics, talent and information hub.
In the past 40 years, Guangzhou has stayed at the forefront of reform and opening up, steadfastly pushing forward and unwaveringly expanding the horizons of both. As its reform of the business environment is becoming a nationally promoted example, a more open Guangzhou, with the Greater Bay Area as its springboard and in coordination with Hong Kong and Macau as it deepens its comprehensive cooperation with the rest of the world, is moving closer to the center of the world stage and unleashing even greater potential for high-quality development.
