As the annual report cards have been read out by each of the GBA’s nine mayors in recent days, it has become clearer that 2019 was much worse for the “little tigers” than for the advanced-manufacturing giants: Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Zhaoqing and Huizhou have been hit harder by the external trade slowdown than Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Foshan. (Zhuhai has been an exceptional case because of Hengqin’s development.)

They and their bosses, the party secretaries, have now all trooped up to Guangzhou for the provincial gatherings, where they must explain to each other what is going on at home. Some are coy. Others, like Zhongshan’s newly installed Party Secretary, Lai Zehua, have chosen to bravely lay out how bad the situation has become, while pledging to catch up with a bold industrial-upgrading plan in the coming years. 

Continue reading Zhongshan pledges to catch up →

Shenzhen Mayor Chen Rugui delivered the city’s preliminary annual Work Report yesterday at the Civic Center in Futian district. It yielded some interesting highlights, with numbers that might sound mind-boggling to Hongkongers. The full report will only come next month, once economic data has been properly audited. Continue reading Shenzhen nails it in 2019 →

Shenzhen, a city with 13 million registered residents, has a workforce of 11,681,100, up 3.3% over last year’s total.

A workforce equal to more than 90% of all residents is only possible, of course, because Shenzhen’s actual population is more than 22 million, once migrant workers are added.

Moreover, according to local media, 151,900 jobs were added to the city’s economy this year, which was slightly above its annual target, while the unemployment rate remained steady at 2.22%. Not a single registered household reported being without at least one breadwinner. 

Continue reading Shenzhen keeps cranking out jobs →

President Xi Jinping lands in Macau on Wednesday. He has decided to devote three full days of his busy schedule to spending time with people in the Special Administrative Region, culminating in the 20^th anniversary celebrations on Friday, December 20. 

He has never done this before. Not even Hong Kong has received this much attention from the big man previously. For his last visit, five years ago, he (memorably) jetted in, gave a speech, and jetted out again. 

Why a man who runs a country of 1.4 billion people is devoting three days of his schedule to 670,000 of them should be obvious by now for anyone who has observed the region for the past six months, let alone the past 20 years: Hong Kong has been unruly and ungrateful; Macau has been loyal and patriotic. A message needs to be sent: if you behave, and if you love your country, you get rewarded.

Continue reading President gives Macau three days →

Shenzhen and Guangzhou attract more than 70% of talent flowing into the Greater Bay Area, new research shows, yet it is Zhuhai that manages to retain talent the longest. 

In its latest quarterly review of the employment market, leading online job site Zhaoping.com points out that the attraction of the two Tier-1 cities is hardly surprising to job-seekers from outside the province, given their size and status. The two cities are also the biggest magnet for university graduates from within the GBA, with Shenzhen attracting 42% of all graduates, while 28% aim for Guangzhou. 

Continue reading GBA ‘talent flows’ report shows mobility →

Land-scarce Shenzhen just cannot get enough of cooperation with its neighbors. With tech giants such as Huawei expanding into Dongguan, and TV maker Skyworth going into Huizhou, the city is looking to the next “outer ring” of the Greater Bay to take a step further in its expansion.

According to local media, Heyuan is the place, and the “Shenzhen-Heyuan Special Cooperation Zone” is under planning.

It’s a win-win for all parties, apparently. The establishment of the new zone will not only boost Heyuan’s economic development, but also strengthen Shenzhen’s “radiative leading role” and expand the industrial capacity of the Shenzhen-Dongguan-Huizhou “economic circle”. 

Transport infrastructure is key to this happening. With the recent opening the high-speed railway between Huizhou and Heyuan, travel time between Shenzhen and Heyuan has been cut to two hours – and once the extension to Shenzhen has been completed, it will be reduced to an hour. 

Read more (in Chinese).