New City Chronicles | With the fastest GDP growth, what did this trillion-dollar city do right?
2024-08-13
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A bird's eye view of Quanzhou.
Economic data for the first half of the year have been released one after another. Among them, the much-watched "GDP trillion club" has undergone significant changes.
In the GDP ranking, Chongqing once again surpassed Guangzhou and returned to the "fourth city"; Ningbo surpassed Tianjin for the first time and made a sprint towards the top ten.
In terms of GDP growth, Quanzhou, Fuzhou, Suzhou and Chongqing all exceeded 6%, ranking at the top. Among them, Quanzhou, with a growth rate of 6.7%, was particularly impressive. It can be said that it has made a comeback, jumping from the "downturn" state last year to become the growth champion among the trillion-dollar cities in the first half of the year.
How did this ordinary prefecture-level city, which does not have a strong presence in the "trillion club", achieve a "reversal" of its development momentum in a short period of time? What did it do right?
If the secondary industry is stable, Quanzhou will be stable
In 2023, Quanzhou's GDP ranking dropped two places and fell out of the top 20 in the country. In some quarters, it even experienced negative growth. The final annual growth rate was 4.8%, which still failed to outperform the national market.
However, Quanzhou's performance has improved significantly this year, and it achieved a "good start" in the first quarter: GDP grew by 7.2% year-on-year, 2.4 percentage points faster than the previous year. Throughout the first half of the year, Quanzhou can be said to have continued this momentum.
This amazing "reversal" can be directly explained by the simultaneous progress of the "three major drivers": in the first half of the year, Quanzhou's fixed asset investment grew by 8.5%, 4.6 percentage points higher than the national average (3.9%); in terms of total retail sales of consumer goods, Quanzhou grew by 6.1%, 2.4 percentage points higher than the national average (3.7%); in terms of foreign trade, the city's total import and export volume in the first half of the year was 139.098 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.6%, 14.5 percentage points higher than the national average (6.1%).
Looking at specific industries, Quanzhou's "leading industry" - the secondary industry has played a stabilizing role, with a growth rate of 7.6%, 1.8 percentage points higher than the national average (5.8%).
The stability of the secondary industry is crucial for Quanzhou because Quanzhou is a veritable manufacturing powerhouse. Its secondary industry still accounts for more than 50%. At the same time, Quanzhou is also one of the top ten industrial cities in the country. In 2023, the added value of Quanzhou's secondary industry reached 716.423 billion, ranking ninth in the country, leaving behind 2 trillion cities such as Chengdu and Hangzhou, far higher than its own GDP ranking. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that if the secondary industry is stable, Quanzhou will be stable.
Another detail that can prove the strength of Quanzhou's manufacturing industry is that, in today's world of "Internet celebrity cities", the overall presence of Quanzhou may not be strong, but many brands born in Quanzhou have considerable market recognition around the world. For example, in the Paris Olympics currently being held, "Quanzhou-made" products can be seen everywhere in the stadium, covering clothing, sports goods, sports equipment, food and other fields.
Quanzhou CRRC
In the first half of this year, the acceleration of Quanzhou's secondary industry was mainly due to the strong recovery of some key industries. For example, the added value of high-tech industries in industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 14.9%, 6.4 percentage points higher than the average level of the city; the computer, communication and other electronic equipment manufacturing industry achieved double-digit growth for 12 consecutive months, and the output of optoelectronic devices increased by 20.1%.
An important data that echoes this is that in the first half of the year, Quanzhou was approved as a national pilot city for new manufacturing technology transformation, and the city's industrial technology transformation investment increased by 31.2%. In other words, Quanzhou's manufacturing industry itself is accelerating its upgrading pace and striving to change its shortcomings such as large but not strong industry and relatively single industrial structure.
If private enterprises have confidence, Quanzhou will be fine.
In addition to being a strong manufacturing city, Quanzhou is also known as a "private economy city". Quanzhou's private economy ranks first in the country, and the importance of the private economy to Quanzhou can be summarized as "eighty-eighty-ninety-nine": it contributes more than 80% of the city's tax revenue, more than 80% of GDP, more than 90% of R&D investment, more than 90% of urban employment, and more than 90% of the number of enterprises. Based on this, it can be said that if the private economy performs well, Quanzhou will not be bad.
When summarizing the achievements in the first half of the year, local officials also emphasized the contribution of the private economy. For example, they pointed out that "confidence in private investment has been boosted" - in the first half of the year, Quanzhou's private investment grew by 10.3%, 1.8 percentage points higher than the average level of investment in the city, and 2.4 percentage points faster than the first quarter; "confidence in private enterprises has been boosted" - in the first half of the year, the added value of private industrial enterprises above designated size in Quanzhou grew by 11.2%, the sales of private wholesale, retail, accommodation and catering above designated size grew by 22.8%, and the import and export of private enterprises grew by 18.2%.
The boost in private investment and private enterprise confidence is inseparable from a series of actions taken by Quanzhou in recent years to support the development of the private economy and optimize the business environment.
Public information shows that from 2021, a special action plan to continuously improve the business environment was launched to promote breakthroughs in key areas and key links; in 2022, benchmarking against advanced cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, a special action plan to optimize the business environment of "improving efficiency, enhancing effectiveness, and increasing benefits" was formulated and implemented; in 2023, eight special actions such as "Friendly and Clean Assistance to Enterprises" and "Smart Government Affairs" were launched; and this year, the brand connotation of "Quanxin Quanyi" will be further deepened, and 166 innovative measures will be introduced to bring the optimization of the business environment into a new stage of "building brand and improving quality and efficiency"... Over the past three years, Quanzhou has been promoting the improvement and strengthening of the business environment at a step-by-step manner.
Judging from the development of the local private economy, this effort to optimize the business environment has obviously paid off. As of now, the total number of business entities in Quanzhou is 1.5552 million, ranking first among the cities in Fujian Province for ten consecutive years. At the same time, in May this year, Quanzhou's typical practice of "creating a first-class business environment to promote the high-quality development of the private economy through good government-enterprise interaction" was also selected in the notice of typical experiences and practices found in the special inspection of optimizing the business environment issued by the General Office of the State Council, and was promoted nationwide.
It should be said that in the current economic environment, this emphasis on the business environment and efforts to boost the confidence of private enterprises in development are indeed worthy of learning for all cities.
Manufacturing cities are showing new advantages
Of course, the fact that Quanzhou was able to quickly get back on the fast track of development after experiencing the "low point" demonstrates the resilience of its economic development, but the city's long-term development still requires continued overcoming of difficulties.
In fact, as one of the few ordinary prefecture-level cities among the trillion-dollar cities, Quanzhou's development foundation, or "talent", is not high in many aspects. For example, in Fujian Province, Xiamen, as a sub-provincial city, is obviously better than Quanzhou in terms of level and external popularity; in terms of the concentration of various development factors, Fuzhou, as the provincial capital, is also higher than Quanzhou. In this regard, Quanzhou has a rather embarrassing "record" - it is currently the only city in the country with a GDP of more than one trillion but no subway.
In terms of industry, in addition to the need to continue upgrading the manufacturing industry and increase technology and innovation, Quanzhou's high dependence on foreign trade is also an important uncertainty factor in the current global market. And since 2021, Quanzhou's GDP has been surpassed by Fuzhou for three consecutive years, losing the title of "Fujian's No. 1 Economic City" that it had maintained for 22 consecutive years.
In addition, in recent years, Fujian has clearly proposed to implement the strategy of "strengthening the provincial capital". As an ordinary prefecture-level city, Quanzhou obviously needs to make more efforts to regain its glory.
However, it is always worthwhile to optimize the business environment and promote the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. Quanzhou can be said to have set a positive example. In fact, in the first half of this year, some cities with faster growth have a common feature, that is, their manufacturing strength is relatively prominent.
For example, in addition to Quanzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen and other cities with high growth rates are all important manufacturing centers in China. In contrast, cities that are mainly known for their service industry and consumption are performing relatively "half a beat slower". This differentiation situation is likely to be a more obvious trend in the development of trillion-dollar cities at present and in the future.
The reason behind this is not complicated. As global manufacturing competition intensifies and a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation accelerates, the weight of manufacturing in development will become more prominent. In addition, China's foreign trade structure is shifting from mainly exporting labor-intensive products to mainly exporting electromechanical and high-tech products.
Then, cities with manufacturing advantages are expected to gain stronger momentum in both internal and external development. Relatively speaking, with the changes in the real estate industry and the fact that consumption is still in the stage of needing to be boosted, cities that focus more on the service industry and consumption will inevitably be under greater pressure. This means that the future competition among cities will be more prominently manifested in the competition of industries and business environment.
Poster design by Zhou Huan
Yu Heng, special commentator of The Paper
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
