Economic Overview
Shaoguan can be said to be a pioneer of modern industry. From 1950s to 1970s, owing to its strategic importance, China’s central government aimed to develop it into a heavy industry base in Southern China. A great number of backbone enterprises including Shaoguan Steel Group Company Limited, Shaoguan Smelting Plant, Shaoguan Excavator Producer, Fankou Lead-Zinc Mine, Dabaoshan Mining Co. , Ltd and suchlike were founded one after another which all contributed to the leading positions Shaoguan industries played in local economy and also made Shaoguan a key industrial base in Guangdong province. New developments have been achieved since 1980s with better layout of light and heavy industries. Since entering the 21st century with a goal of constructing a city with a powerful economy around northern Guangdong province, the city suited its measures to local conditions and the needs of new industries, working vigourously to develop its competitive industries. So far Shaoguan has become a comprehensive industrial city with outstanding resource sectors, strong processing industries and partial key light industries among which the total output value of industries above designated size was 32.25 billion RMB in 2017. As Guangdong province’s steel and special steel manufacturing base, Shaoguan Steel Group Company Limited,the leading steel enterprise, produces 6.5 million tons of steel annually ranked among the top 100 world steel companies and a major ship-plate steel producer around China under the leadership of China Baowu Steel Group Corporation Limited (the merging of two major steel corporations: Baoshan Steel Group Corporation and Wuhan Steel Corporation). On the basis of the Shaoguan steel industrial cluster, Southern China Special Steel Industrial Park takes powder metallurgy, steel further processing and suchlike at its core to extend the industrial chain of Shaoguan steel industry. Known as City of Zinc and Home of Non-ferrous Metal, the Non-ferrous Metal Circular Economy Industrial Base in Shaoguan’ s Renhua county was certified by the Economic and Information Commission of Guangdong Province as the first circular economy industrial base with a planned area of around 400 thousand square meters and now the base is upgrading to a key base for non-ferrous metal industry with five features of ecological, environmental friendly, high-tech, high tax creation, and considerable scale. Since 2015, Shaoguan Cigarettes Factory has had an annual output of over 400 thousand tanks and was ranked as one of the 500 largest industrial enterprises around the nation. Shaoguan Power Plant’ s project of Replacing the Small Units with Large Ones has been put into operation to make a massive construction and reformation on the power grid with an installed capacity of 1860 MW in total. Typically as a dominant industry with over 120 machinery manufacturing enterprises above designated size, the city’s machinery and equipment industry aim to develop an advanced manufacturing industry base for manufacturing basic equipment components and endeavors to possess an excellent capability of producing, developing and completing automotive components. In recent years, industrial park has gradually become a significant growth pole. Guanshao Industrial Park develops rapidly in various industries including machinery manufacturing, electronics, medicine, printing and toys with a primarily planned area of 28.63 square kilometers and 150 square kilometers for further development. Lechang Industrial Park, with a planned area of around 9 million square meters, takes the clockwork, textile and machinery manufacturing as its major projects while Nanxiong Industrial Park takes fine chemistry, electronics and equipment manufacturing as its leading industries with a planned area of around 8 million square meters. Renhua Industrial Park, with an area of around 4.7 million square meters, centers on industries of non-ferrous metal, further processing, machinery manufacturing, electronic information, warehousing and distribution, information-logistics and manufacturing as well as serving. Shixing Industrial Park, with an area of around 8.6 million square meters, prioritizes the industries of Stationery pen, novel material, furniture, non-ferrous, plastics renewable resources, industrial cluster of Three Electrics (Television, Telephone, Computer and other information media). Wengyuan Industrial Park has several specialized departments: Huacai Industrial Park centers on chemical painting with around 5.3 million square meters; Power Supply Base on power-supply industry with around 2.7 million square meters; Lilong Industrial Park on commerce and trade with around 350 thousand square meters; Guangdong-Taiwan Agricultural Park on agriculture planting with around 33 million square meters. Xinfeng Industrial Park prioritizes on developing green building material and rare earth with an area of around 6.7 million square meters. Ruyuan Industrial Park develops industries of electronic aluminum foil, bio-pharmaceutical, new fluorine material, organic food with an area of around 5.5 million square meters. In 2017, Shaoguan industrial parks witnessed the set up of 174 newly operated projects and 59 put-into-operation projects both created 12.5-billion RMB fixed investment. The industrial investment accounted for 62.2% of the city’s total investment which generated 1.538 billion RMB taxes, an increase of 11.7% from the year before. Shaoguan also strides to improve the service for industrial development and operates 63 provincial and municipal engineering technology research centers, 2 provincial business incubators and 1 provincial entrepreneurial center, which ranks in the forefront of Guangdong province. In addition, it pays much attention on investment promotion,attracting 115 projects with total investment of 32.66 billion RMB among which 51 are over 100 million RMB.
Shaoguan also excels in agriculture and climatic resources and ranks the first in average cultivated land in Guangdong province. In recent years, with the intensified construction of rural agricultural infrastructure, agricultural output has instantly increased and the gross output value of 27.49 billion RMB has been achieved in farming, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery in 2017. The city has a forest coverage rate accounted for 75.05%, with 1.3 billion square meters of forest land, and 90.54 million cubic meters of living wood growing stock. These three indicators rank first in Guangdong province. Lechang, Nanxiong, Shixing, Renhua, Ruyuan counties are all subsumed within national major ecological area. Shaoguan is regarded as the forest ecological city in Guangdong province and the national pioneering area of ecological civilization. Shaoguan brilliantly fulfilled the provincial task of paddy field reclamation with a high-level fundamental farmland construction in forefront in Guangdong province. What’s more, provincial modern agriculture area of “Five-in-one” covered all counties in Shaoguan successfully. The registration of farm land contractual management reached to 96.4% and the rate of certificate issuance ranked in the forefront of Guangdong province. The city has 13 municipal model towns, especially the Jiangwei Orchid Town is listed into provincial model towns for its succuss in developing planting industry.. With the solid advance of new rural reconstruction, comprehensive improvement in residence environment has been conducted in 6995 natural villages. Meanwhile, Shaoguan is implementing the projection of functional areas, operating the layout of ecological baseline and sets up the construction of a special ecological protection area in northern Guangdong province. Shaoguan endeavors to become an ecological city, aiming to fulfill a 270 million square meters forestation area and a 42 million square meters forestation area of forest carbon sink, promote the construction of a 38-kilometer ecological landscape forest belt, build 11 additional forest parks and 1 more wetland park and complete the reformation of state-owned forest farm. There are some areas in Shaoguan selected to be the first forest towns in Guangdong province including Shixing county, Shendushui village of the Yao nationality, Jiufeng town in Lechang county and Hat Peak town in Nanxiong county.
In 2017, Shaoguan’s retail scale of commodities was up to 68.74 billion RMB. A mass specialized wholesale markets of fruit, vegetable, foodstuff, small commodities, cloth, aquatic product and suchlike can be seen in the city. Also, various specialized business districts flourish in Shaoguan like building materials, decorative materials, daily commodities, agricultural byproducts, motorcycles, game and wild-growing products, second-hand trade, mechanical and electrical products. Renown wholesale and retail enterprises including Wal-Mart, RT-Mart, Xinjin Market, Yihua Department Store also have a promising development here. As one of the national largest express-railway hubs and highway transportation hubs, Shaoguan has developed rapidly in modern logistics among which SISG Logistics, Yihua Logistics, Shaofeng Logistics has burgeoned and some construction of major logistics media including International Logistics Center in Northern Guangdong, Guangdong and Hunan Province Storage Logistics Center, Qujiang Comprehensive Logistics Park has accelerated their paces. Some leading national property companies like Country Garden, Evergrande, Poly are soundly based in real estate. Service industries like transportation, post and telecommunication, catering, information, intermediary services all expands the business at a fast speed. In 2017, there were 42.385 million tourist visiting that added up to a gross income of 3.901 billion RMB. And the financial institutions balance of savings and loans of home and foreign currency amounted to 175.5 billion RMB and 87.68 billion RMB respectively at the end of 2017.
In 2017, the import and export value of Shaoguan province reached to 16.62 billion RMB among which 8.99 billion RMB was taken by the value of import while 7.63 billion RMB by the value of export. Shaoguan endeavors to provide a platform based on major industries and it also cooperates with Dongguan City to build an advanced equipment industrial park in southern China supporting the cooperative development for industries of Shaoguan and western region of the Pearl River. The city positively plans a cooperative area for industries in the eastern region of the Pearl River. It strives to foster the emerging pillars including advanced equipment manufacturing, tourism and culture, big data, commerce logistics, medicine and health, modern agriculture and more industries. Its machinery basic components cluster was absorbed into one of the model sites of the third national innovative industrial cluster. A large collection of major program contracts were signed up successfully with CRRC Zhuzhou Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit Manufacturing factory, EHang Intelligent Pilotless Aircraft etc.. Moreover, South China Data Valley Shaoguan is officially unveiled and Huawei was successfully introduced into the construction of intelligent Shaoguan. It strives to promote private economy with an increase of 12.8% in the amount of private enterprises around the city. There was also a growth of 8.5% in the value of modern service industry that received 49.7% in Shaoguan’ s GDP. It improves comprehensively enterprises’ ability of technological innovation with a growth of 15.2% that amounted to 2.05 billion RMB in high-technology manufacturing industry. Additional 36 high-tech enterprises had an income of over ¥500 million. With the full coverage of industrial enterprise research institutions, up to 20% of big enterprises set up their own research institutions. The construction of Guanshao couplet-assistance has been undertaken and the strategic cooperation of Guangzhou and Shaoguan has been set up to promote progress on regional cooperation. Shaoguan has already become an attractive investment region to domestic and foreign companies.
In 2017, the fixed investment was up to 69.28 billion RMB, and Shaoguan has increased the investment of transportation and urban infrastructure, forming a comprehensive traffic network based on the Three Railways, Five Highways and One Waterway (Beijing-Guangzhou High-speed rail, Beijing-Guangzhou Rail, Shaoguan-Ganzhou Rail; Beijing-Hongkong-Macao Highway, Southern Shaoguan Highway or called Shaoguan-Ganzhou Highway, Lechang-Guangzhou Highway, Shaoguan Northern Orbital, Daqing-Guangzhou Highway; North River Waterway). Shaoguan was the first city in Northern Guangdong and the forth one in Guangdong province to successfully build an orbital highway and also completed the construction of county highway. Advanced development was achieved in national and provincial roads, waterways as well as rural roads hardening construction. At present, it only takes 55 minutes by high-speed rail to get to Guangzhou, 95-minute to Shenzhen, 190-minute to Wuhan. As a prefecture-level second-class ports in Guangdong province, there are 2 Railway ports and 2 Highway ports. It takes only a-day from Shaoguan Xingang to Hongkong or Macao by waterway.
Shaoguan is entitled as the only one Carbon Emissions Trading Model City, National Model City of Energy Saving and Emission Reduction Fiscal Policy, China’ s Excellent Tourism City. In recent few years it is certified as the National Hygiene City, National Garden City, National Double Support Model City, National Ecological civilization pilot. China Financial Ecological City, Guangdong Historical and Cultural City, Guangdong Civilized City, National Science and Technology Progress Evaluation Advanced City, City of Science, Education and Producing. Shaoguan has developed itself as a competitive and civilized area of strong economy, convenient transportation, excellent ecology and tremendous potential.
