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)