Guangdong will further strengthen its manufacturing and industrial base and make it more “modern” to maintain its decades-long status as China’s economic powerhouse, according to the top official in the country’s richest province.
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The southern province will “adhere to the principle of making the real economy our foundation, and manufacturing our mainstay”, Guangdong party secretary Huang Kunming said during a gathering on Thursday with provincial deputies and the press during the “two sessions” parliamentary meetings in Beijing.
“We should take the lead, be the vanguard, and work diligently to advance technological innovation and industrial innovation,” Huang said in response to a Post question.
The economic output of Guangdong has ranked first in the country for 36 consecutive years. As a pioneer in China’s reform and opening-up movement that began in the late 1970s, Guangdong seized upon the opportunity to thrive with global industrial transfers over four decades, cultivating labour-intensive industries and its own manufacturing brands that helped carve out a reputation as the “world’s factory”.
The province then gradually evolved into a technological hub for China as the home to tech giants such as Huawei, Tencent and DJI, as well as electric-vehicle makers BYD and Xpeng.
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In recent years, however, the province has borne the brunt of the increasing economic headwinds facing the country. Guangdong’s export-reliant economy, for example, is vulnerable to rising global trade tensions.
Domestically, China’s other economic engines – such as Jiangsu province, the current No 2 – are also quickly catching up, putting pressure on Guangdong to keep its crown. Earlier this year, Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, also emerged as a new hub of innovation as breakthroughs by China’s home-grown artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek and humanoid-robot-firm Unitree Robotics stole the spotlight.