But one thing is certain: citizens today have wider choices and better, more personalized services at the many booming private businesses that seemingly dominated the local economy overnight.

Incomplete statistics suggest that by November 2002, the province had reported 1.77 million private enterprises with a total registered capital of 306 billion yuan (US$37 billion).

Many farmers, whose forefathers had spent their lives toiling on a small piece of land, have changed their fortunes and excelled as successful businessmen.

The booming garment business in Humen, a small town in Dongguan City, that reports annual sales of 2 billion US dollars, has provided the residents with rich, carefree lives admired even by urbanites in larger cities.

Last year, the 700,000 residents in Humen reported total bank savings of 17 billion yuan (US$2 billion), about US$2,850 per person.

"Private capital is a most vigorous force to drive the local economy," said a local official in Humen.

Like a magic wand, the private sector is changing the outlook of the entire province, particularly its rural areas. Many boomtowns have emerged and quickly gained national popularity for their brand names.

Zhongshan, a historic city in the central southern part of Guangdong, has become a major production base for lamps, and its products have taken over 50 percent of the domestic market share.

Of China's top ten undergarment brands, seven are brand names from Yanbu, a small town in Nanhai City whose annual undergarment production tops 2 billion yuan (US$240 million).

Science and technology have played a leading role in upgrading the small, unprofessional workshops burgeoning in the early 1980s to larger, technology-intensive enterprises and have given birth to renowned enterprise groups such as Zhongli Group, based in the provincial capital Guangzhou, and the Haiwang Group in Shenzhen.

By the end of 2001, the province had reported over 4,700 privately-run technology firms, including 574 high-tech firms that took up nearly a half of the province's total, said Ou Weidong, a senior official.

In their expansion in a globalized environment, many private businesses have started to tap the international market. By November 2002, private firms in Guangdong had reported total exports of 3.66 billion US dollars, over 30 percent of the total export volume of their counterparts nationwide.

To address the bottleneck in financing, many business owners have resorted to a modern corporate system and the capital market.

To date, 10 private businesses in Guangdong have undergone drastic restructuring to become joint-stock companies, and over 20are ready to carry out similar reforms soon.

Some 18 businesses have been listed at stock exchanges in Shanghai or Shenzhen.

Early last year, Qiaoxing Group based in Huizhou City hit newspaper headlines as the first private high-tech enterprise in China's interior regions ever to be listed on the US Nasdaq exchange.

"We should take the opportunity to further boost the private sector, which will lead the long-term growth of the national economy," said Ou Guangyuan, a senior official with the Chinese Communist Party Guangdong Provincial Committee.

To that effect, sources here say the provincial government is brewing more preferential policies and will honor the top 100 entrepreneurs of the province at a meeting on the private sector scheduled for February.

(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2003)