What a place does Guangdong Province take in the national
competition pattern? According to a report on regional competitive
power released lately by the provincial academy of social sciences,
the competitiveness index for south China's Guangdong area is about
two times that of the national average and is about the same as
that of southeast coastal provinces like Zhejiang, Jiangsu and
Fujian. The Pearl River Delta has surpassed Beijing and approached
Shanghai in terms of competitive power.
From a global perspective, China's international competitive power
is apparently higher than the world average level, but lower than
that of moderate-income countries. While the international
competitive power of Guangdong is near that of a moderate-income
country.
Uneven Regional Competitiveness
There exists an unbalanced growth of competitiveness in different
parts of Guangdong, and this trend is widening, the report
said.
Among the 21 prefecture-level cities, six have a comparatively high
competitive power, all of them rapidly developing cities in the
Pearl River Delta. At the same time, 48 of the top 50
internationally competitive large enterprises of the province also
had their headquarters set up in the Delta. Besides, there are
seven areas with mediocre competitiveness, and eight with
relatively weak competitiveness. The index of the province's 50
counties in mountain areas is less than half of the national
average, or only one-tenth of that in the Delta area. This
situation indicates that uneven regional power has become a problem
in urgent need of solution for the province's economic and social
development.
Industrial Competitiveness Makes Great Contributions
According to the report, factors affecting regional competitive
power are divided into six component forces, namely, industry,
science and technology, government, market, city and foreign
trade.
In
recent years the six component forces contributed steadily to the
competitiveness of the province as a whole, with the contribution
of government and technology component forces assuming the tendency
of gradual enhancement, while that of the market and foreign trade
is weakening. Year 2000 statistics show that the biggest
contributor to regional competitive power is industry, in which the
contribution of primary industry is declining annually and that of
the secondary industry is on the rise.
The contribution of technology, though tending to enlarge, is still
the smallest among these six factors. The level of technological
development of some large or medium-sized enterprises is still far
from living up to people's expectation.
As
for the government competitiveness, it has gradually withdrawn from
competition along with the separation of government administration
from enterprise management, government input and influence have
also declined accordingly. However, since 2000, as a new round of
infrastructure construction began, local governments have seen more
debts and deficits, and the decision-making level has also exerted
an increasing influence on regional competitive power.
While foreign trade index directly reflects a region's capability
to participate in international competitions, the decline of
per-capita foreign capital utilization indicates that, in both
domestic and international market competitions, the province needs
further adjusting the foreign capital structure, so as to attract
more overseas funds and use them in a better way.
(People's Daily Novermber 8, 2002)