Jiangmen, Silicon Valley team up

Jiangmen, known as the capital of overseas Chinese, has teamed up with Silicon Valley to build the city into the capital of overseas Chinese innovation and entrepreneurship.

A delegation of more than 20 government officials and entrepreneurs from the southern China city and their US counterparts attended the Silicon Valley-Jiangmen Innovation Forum on Sunday in Mountain View, California. The forum attracted more than 200 guests including elected officials, entrepreneurs and academia.

"Silicon Valley is a world-renowned center of electronic industry with a high concentration of small- and medium-sized high-tech companies, while Jiangmen enjoys advantages in manufacturing, cost and market, which means immense potential for cooperation in developing the high-tech industry," said Xu Xiaoxiong, vice-mayor of Jiangmen.

Jiangmen, in Guangdong province, is a prefecture-level city of 4.5 million in the western part of the Pearl River Delta, known as "the world's workshop". As a key national economic center, the city has stepped up efforts to attract talent and highly skilled professionals in recent years with policies and incentives.

Last year, Jiangmen ranked first as a national demonstration city for entrepreneurship and innovation for small and micro enterprises in China.

In the next five years, Jiangmen will put a priority on equipment manufacturing, smart manufacturing, green manufacturing and sophisticated manufacturing, said Xu.

"Jiangmen is one of the best-kept secrets of China and, in my view, the newly discovered shining pearl of the Pearl River Delta," said Carol Brookins, former US executive director of World Bank Group, and currently managing director of Public Capital Advisors LLC.

She said that she first visited Jiangmen in 1999 when she was spearheading an effort for Asia-Pacific economic cooperation.

She said at that time Jiangmen was underdeveloped compared with the dynamic growth of the eastern Pearl River, and the trip from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region took six hours by slow ferry and land. Today, it takes only two hours.

"In China and in the world, sustainability is a very important topic and issue," said Brookins. "But I want to commend Jiangmen because the focus of Jiangmen on being a sustainable city really began more than 17 years ago.

On economic growth, Jiangmen has grown three times, and at the same time, its ecological environment and economy have been developing in a harmonious way, said Brookins, adding that "it's one of the most important assets for Jiangmen".

The connection between Jiangmen and the San Francisco Bay Area began over a century ago, when people from the Jiangmen's five counties region came to San Francisco to exploit mineral resources and to take part in building the Transcontinental Railroad.

More than 300,000 Chinese of Jiangmen origin live in the Bay Area, said Liang Fuming, director of Jiangmen Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau. Trade between Jiangmen and the US reached $3.16 billion last year, said Xu.

During the forum, Chinese and US entrepreneurs signed 12 agreements to develop projects covering biotech, automobiles, electric appliances and healthcare, involving a total of $378 million in capital.

The Chinese delegation and 16 cities in Silicon Valley also established the Jiangmen-Silicon Valley Innovation City Alliance at the forum.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com