Guangdong urged to drive high-quality development

President Xi Jinping has urged Guangdong province to comprehensively deepen reform and opening-up to drive high-quality development, and to advance the building of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area with sustained efforts.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks during a two-day fact-finding trip to the southern province that concluded on Saturday.

This was Xi's first domestic inspection tour since the conclusion of the fourth plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee on Oct 23, which adopted the recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), a blueprint that charts China's development course over the next five years.

Addressing local Party and government officials in the provincial capital of Guangzhou on Saturday, Xi said that Guangdong, as an economic powerhouse and a developed region, should take the lead, set an example and play a major role in formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for national economic and social development.

According to official statistics, Guangdong's GDP reached 14.16 trillion yuan ($1.99 trillion) in 2024, putting the province at the top of the country's GDP rankings for the 36th consecutive year.

In recent years, the province has accelerated efforts to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology, leading the nation in research and development spending and in the number of high-value invention patents and high-tech enterprises.

Xi emphasized that for Guangdong to create new advantages and achieve new breakthroughs, it must vigorously carry forward the spirit of reform and opening-up as well as the spirit of the special economic zones, and promote high-quality development through comprehensive and deepened reform and opening-up.

He called on the province to focus on developing new quality productive forces, strengthen the integration of technological and industrial innovation, and foster a modern industrial system with strong international competitiveness.

Xi noted that advancing the development of the Greater Bay Area is both a major responsibility and a rare opportunity for Guangdong. He urged the province to deepen cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao, and support the two special administrative regions in better integrating into and contributing to the nation's overall development.

According to an outline development plan released in 2019, the Greater Bay Area comprises the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and nine cities in Guangdong's Pearl River Delta region, including Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Xi said the Greater Bay Area should stay focused on developing a vibrant and internationally competitive first-class bay area and world-class city cluster. He called on Guangdong to play the role of the main driving force and locomotive and make better use of the strengths of enterprises, professional service providers, universities, research institutions and various kinds of talent.

In addition to Guangzhou, Xi also visited a pomelo growing base in Meizhou in northeastern Guangdong, where he was briefed on Guangdong's efforts to boost support for old revolutionary base areas and advance all-around rural vitalization.

Xi's inspection trips to Guangdong, a place he described as "a pacesetter, pioneer and pilot zone of reform and opening-up", have often come at critical junctures in the Party and the country's development.

In 2012, Xi visited the province for his first domestic inspection tour after the 18th CPC National Congress. He returned in 2018 and 2020, which coincided respectively with the 40th anniversaries of China's reform and opening-up and the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. In 2023, the first year of implementing the guiding principles of the 20th CPC National Congress, his first inspection trip also took him to Guangdong.

Xie Baojian, deputy director of Jinan University's Hong Kong and Macao Economic Research Institute in Guangzhou, said that Xi's tour fully demonstrated China's strong resolve to comprehensively deepen reform and further open up to the world for high-quality development.

He noted that the Greater Bay Area itself is a product of China's reform and high-level opening-up, playing a pivotal role as a bridgehead in the country's efforts to advance openness.

"Externally, the Greater Bay Area is deeply integrated with global industrial and market chains. Internally, it has been a pioneer in driving reform through the integration of technological and industrial innovation, institutional innovation and comprehensive deepening of reforms across various sectors," Xie said.

Mao Yanhua, a professor of economics at Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of Regional Openness and Cooperation in Guangzhou, said that Xi's visit this time was aimed not only at inspecting Guangdong's progress in pursuing high-quality development, but also at guiding the Greater Bay Area to play a stronger role as a powerhouse for such development.

"In Meizhou, how local residents have improved their livelihoods by fostering distinctive rural industries shows that in our drive toward Chinese modernization, cities and rural areas can each find their own paths of development," Mao said.

Mao noted that amid a complex and shifting international environment and China's accelerating economic transformation, the Greater Bay Area is expected to play a greater role in serving the country's overall development strategies, in terms of deepening reform and opening-up, promoting the dual circulation of domestic and international markets, and advancing the Belt and Road Initiative.