Guangzhou's Haizhu: Cultivating Thriving Industrial "Tropical Rainforest" for High-Quality Development

"High-quality development is the hard truth of the new era," at this year's Guangdong Province "first meeting of the new spring," the phrase was prominently displayed in front of the presidium, indicating the direction for China's largest economic province to "fight for the economy."

What is the essence of high-quality development? Looking back at the process of world economic development, the common driving force behind each industrial revolution has been based on significant scientific and technological innovations, leading to the emergence of new technologies, new tools, and new equipment, ultimately changing the direction of the tide of the times.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is precisely the forefront of China's innovation-driven development, surging with the "breath of spring." Zhigutrend has observed that in recent years, Guangzhou's Haizhu District has delivered a relatively impressive performance in terms of high-quality social and economic development. A noteworthy phenomenon is:

In Haizhu, whether it is the towering leading enterprises, the rapidly growing mid-sized enterprises, or the ubiquitous small and medium-sized enterprises, they all show a vibrant and mutually promoting trend, like a thriving industrial "tropical rainforest," forming a dynamic ecosystem.

This may be the key code to Haizhu's high-quality development.

Uniquely advantaged Haizhu

The sharpness of a sword comes from grinding, and the fragrance of plum blossoms comes from the bitter cold. Economic development has never been smooth sailing but rather, it is through trials and tribulations that one can welcome the harvest.

In recent years, facing a complex and changing external economic environment, Guangzhou's Haizhu has delivered an impressive "report card."

For example, in the first half of this year, Haizhu District achieved a regional gross domestic product of 132.788 billion yuan, with a GDP growth rate as high as 6.5%, fixed asset investment growth of 12.4%, new generation information technology services growth of 44.3%, and a total industrial output value of large-scale industries growing by 14.4%... running at the "Haizhu acceleration."

Why is Haizhu's economy so resilient? Take real estate, for instance. From January to September this year, against the backdrop of a 20.7% year-on-year decrease in the signed area of new houses (excluding commercial offices) in the whole city of Guangzhou, the signed area of new houses in Haizhu District actually increased by 6.7% year-on-year against the trend.During the just-concluded National Day holiday, the real estate market in Haizhu District also took the lead in warming up. The total number of visits to the residential properties for sale in the district exceeded 10,000 person-times, with more than 530 units subscribed and sold, covering a sales area of about 60,000 square meters, and the total sales amount reached 4.2 billion yuan. The total transaction amount for second-hand existing houses was about 500 million yuan, which is double the amount compared to the same period last year.

The cultural, commercial, and tourism markets in Haizhu are also booming. Take the Guangzhou Tower scenic area, a landmark known as "Little Waist," for example. During the National Day holiday, it received 409,000 tourists, a year-on-year increase of 33%. Popular internet-famous spots like Haizhu Wetlands and Pazhou are bustling with visitors.

These "votes" from Guangzhou citizens and tourists, represented by their genuine spending, are thanks to the continuous positive development fundamentals of Haizhu. The draft of the Overall Territorial Space Plan of Haizhu District (2021-2035) shows that its urban spatial pattern is very distinctive, which can be said to be unique among the four first-tier cities: the Guangzhou city central axis, extending across the Pearl River from Zhujiang New Town, runs right through the entire Haizhu District, with a very obvious location advantage; Sun Yat-sen University, known as "the first school in Lingnan," is located here, facing the "super engine" of Guangzhou's economic development—the Pazhou Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy Pilot Zone; the world's largest urban wetland—Haizhu Wetland Park, acts like a green lung, providing an excellent ecological barrier; the Pearl River's front and back channels encircle like jade belts, wrapping the entire Haizhu District, with beautiful river views that are beyond description...

Once, Haizhu supported "half the sky" of Guangzhou's urban industry: from Guangzhou's first 10,000-ton giant ship, China's first centrifuge, the world's first titanium diving suit, to the popular nationwide "Wanbao" refrigerator, "Wuyang" bicycle, "Shuangqiao" monosodium glutamate, "Fenghuang" washing machine, "Tiger Head" battery... The industrial heritage is also very profound.

It is precisely these unique location, industry, culture, and ecological advantages that have laid a solid foundation for Haizhu to build an industrial "tropical rainforest."

At the beginning of this year, the main leaders of Haizhu District clearly proposed to create a new industrial ecosystem of "tropical rainforest style" led by chain leaders, driven by leading enterprises, and characterized by agglomeration and development:

The tropical rainforest is the ecosystem with the highest stability and resilience, as well as the strongest vitality and vitality on Earth. Different species circulate benignly and grow competitively, thus the entire ecosystem exudes infinite vitality.The recent Haizhu District Committee's 13th Plenary Session, held for the eighth time, further pointed out the characteristics of a "tropical rainforest-style" industrial ecosystem:

Leading enterprises are "towering trees"

Mid-sized enterprises are "lush green trees providing shade"

Small and micro enterprises are "blooming flowers"

It is evident that Haizhu's layout is steadfast, not merely focusing on "size" and "strength," but persistently striving to create a rich industrial ecosystem for sustainable development.

What unique advantages does the "tropical rainforest-style" industrial ecosystem offer?

Unleashing the potential of the economy

D擎 Optics, which was born and grew in Haizhu District, is a vivid example of a "tropical rainforest-style" industrial ecosystem.

This is a high-tech enterprise nurtured in a "urban village." When three returning overseas doctors co-founded D擎 Optics in 2016, they started in the village community of Wanshengwei in Haizhu District. The location is in the central city area, with convenient transportation and affordable rent, making it an ideal place for starting a business.

By 2019, D擎 Optics moved into a factory of about 4,000 square meters in Haishang Mingzhu Smart Park, gradually developing into a national high-tech enterprise, a provincial specialized and innovative enterprise, and a hidden champion in the smart manufacturing niche, with business radiating to overseas regions such as Asia-Pacific and Europe, and broad development prospects.Deqing Optical's Technical Director, Bai Tianxiang, stated that Haizhu District boasts the geographical advantage of being in the city center, with convenient transportation and logistics. The beautiful environment along the Pearl River's back channel within the park also provides a lot of inspiration for researchers and developers.

This is also a unique advantage of Haizhu District, which has a rich industrial carrier with a stepped layout. From the initial village-level creative parks to the high-quality industrial parks after maturity, and then to high-end office buildings and top locations after growth and expansion, it is sufficient to provide suitable spaces for enterprises at different stages of development.

For example, the launchers, table tennis balls, and referee desks on the table tennis court at this year's Paris Olympics all come from "Haizhu Smart Manufacturing". The more than 30,000 table tennis balls sent to Paris have reduced the elasticity tolerance to within 4 millimeters, the weight tolerance to 0.015 grams, and the hardness and roundness tolerance to within 0.05 millimeters, which is extremely precise.

Its manufacturer, Guangzhou Shuangyu Sports Goods Group Co., Ltd., is a company that has been rooted in Haizhu for a long time. In the 1960s, Shuangyu Sports landed in the Paolou Gang Industrial Avenue of Haizhu District and began large-scale production. In 1998, Shuangyu Sports registered in Haizhu and has been continuously growing and developing.

More well-known is the "National APP" - WeChat, which was also born in Guangzhou's Haizhu District, in the small building shaded by green trees in the TIT Creative Industrial Park.

Today, Tencent's Guangzhou headquarters building has been standing on the banks of the Pearl River in Pazhou, becoming a new landmark and leading the direction of the internet economy.

Rich Biodiversity EcosystemRecognizing the face of the east wind in a casual manner, myriad purples and a thousand reds are always the essence of spring. The advantage of the "tropical rainforest" industry lies in the continuous emergence of new species, forming a rich ecosystem that thrives incessantly.

Haizhu has a highly advantageous "ace" card, which is the digital economy, forming a strong industrial chain with a very complete ecosystem. From January to May 2024 (lagged data), under the rapid development of five major platform companies such as Tencent, Toutiao, Alibaba, Vipshop, and Ant Group, the revenue growth of Haizhu's new generation information technology service industry reached an astonishing 44.3%.

Behind the impressive data is the thriving ecosystem of industrial chains driven by the leading dragon of the digital economy. Currently, the Pazhou experimental zone has gathered more than 36,000 enterprises, with an annual revenue scale exceeding 440 billion yuan, and has been selected as one of the top ten competitive central business districts in China by Forbes.

Achieving such results is by no means a one-day effort.

In 2014, Haizhu District proposed the idea of building an e-commerce headquarters aggregation area in Pazhou;

In 2015, it attracted four major giants, Tencent, Alibaba, Fosun, and Gome, to acquire land and settle in;

In 2016, an internet innovation aggregation area comparable to Beijing, Shenzhen, and other cities of technological innovation, emerged;

By 2023, the added value of the core digital economy industry had already accounted for 19.2% of Haizhu's GDP;

...

In June of this year, Haizhu issued the "Haizhu District's Three-Year (2024-2026) Action Plan for Building a 'Everyone is a Digital Economy Person, Everyone is a Business Promotion Instructor, and Everywhere is a Digital Economy Scene' Full-Domain and Full-Staff Work Pattern". From the name, it can be seen that Haizhu is mobilizing the whole area and all staff to participate in the construction of the digital economy.

In fact, Haizhu District's policy documents on promoting the development of the digital economy, artificial intelligence, and other industries have become increasingly comprehensive, forming a systematic support system:These policies, covering aspects such as copyright, equity, applications, and support, are extremely comprehensive and form an important support for the digital economy to become a "tropical rainforest-like" industry.

At present, on the "main line" of digital economy development in Haizhu, ecological clusters such as consumer internet and artificial intelligence have grown, and with the continuous extension and expansion relying on leading companies, a relatively complete digital economy industry ecosystem has been formed. In the first half of the year, the revenue of Haizhu's industrial internet-related enterprises exceeded 36 billion yuan, with a growth of 43.7%.

Nowadays, artificial intelligence has become a brand-new development "business card" for Haizhu. In the field of large models, Haizhu has released the first provincial government cloud brain large model and has also entered the first batch of large model industry applications. To date, there have been 21 large model application projects landing in the district. The Pazhou Algorithm Competition has become a top algorithm competition in the domestic field with a wide range of participants, a strong panel of judges, sufficient technological content, and fruitful competition results.

Haizhu District will strive to build a leading domestic artificial intelligence large model application demonstration area, and aims to promote the deep application of artificial intelligence large models in more than 8 industries by 2026, promote typical application scenarios of no less than 30, select 50 benchmark enterprises, reserve more than 5,000 algorithms, and drive the main business revenue of the demonstration area to exceed 500 billion yuan, becoming a leading application demonstration highland, policy highland, and talent highland in the country.

Just like in the tropical rainforest, there are rich species of different types, the industrial ecology of Haizhu is also becoming more and more diverse and beautiful, developing stably and sustainably.

Emerging innovation

Towering trees and shrub jungles coexist and prosper, another characteristic of the "tropical rainforest-like" industry is full of innovation vitality.

This is because the "tropical rainforest" has abundant rainfall and sufficient sunlight, different species come into close contact and integrate and cooperate, the great richness brings more "chemical reactions", and even produces "chain reactions".

For example, as we all know, "the whole country's textile industry looks to Guangzhou, and Guangzhou's textile industry looks to Zhongda", the Zhongda textile business circle is located in Haizhu District. This is the world's largest professional market business circle for textile fabrics and accessories, and it is also an important resource allocation center for the garment industry chain. In the past, the cycle from order to delivery of textiles and garments was generally more than a month; now, in the e-commerce field, the delivery of the first order of new models has been shortened to 5 to 7 days.

"In the past, finding fabric required asking and comparing in each booth of the fabric market, and it might not be possible to find the ideal one even after more than ten days. Now, with the right fabric robot scanning, it's done in 2 minutes." The big problem solver is the finished fabric trading service platform and intelligent hardware of Zhijing Technology, a company in Haizhu District.This textile industry internet technology company does not produce a single thread or make a single piece of clothing, yet it utilizes big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and other new generation information technologies to connect nearly 10,000 enterprises and 700,000 looms into a network, fully integrating the flow of information, logistics, and capital, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency of traditional textile factories by 30%.

At the same time, Haizhu District is continuously improving the quality of development and optimizing the business environment to cultivate fertile ground for innovation.

Trend intelligence observed that on the basis of proposing the concept of "Chief Service Officer," Haizhu District has further introduced the concept of the "Haizhu Partner" role to strongly support enterprise development.

Viewing enterprises as "Haizhu Partners" means not only providing "policies and services" but also thinking from the perspective of enterprises about market changes, helping them to expand their territories and develop incremental growth, "growing together with the enterprises."

For example, as a leader in the customized home furnishing industry, Sogal Home has been facing market downward pressure in recent years. In July last year, the Investment Promotion Bureau of Haizhu District organized a special supply and demand docking meeting, where the person in charge of construction engineering brought project soft decoration needs to connect with private enterprises such as Sogal and TCL on-site.

To further promote in-depth interaction between upstream and downstream enterprises, Haizhu has joined forces with leading companies such as Tencent, Douyin, Kuaishou, L'Oréal, and DingTalk to hold seven ecological partner conferences, facilitating supply and demand docking.

These considerate services are recognized by enterprises, and investments have been pouring in.

Today, Haizhu has entered a new era of development. The digital economy is renowned nationwide, the urban industry leads the city, and the Canton Fair is acclaimed as "China's number one exhibition," becoming an important gateway for China to connect with the world.Throughout its journey, Haizhu has transformed from an industrial powerhouse to the vibrant heart of a first-tier city, fostering a thriving and diverse industrial "tropical rainforest" that has also expanded the realm of imagination.

The future holds endless possibilities.