Guangzhou goes to the north with surging momentum The Industrial Development Plan for the Growth Pole in Northern Guangzhou (Including the Airport Economic Zone) (2023-2035) and the Plan for Coordinated Development of the Airport and Surrounding Areas (Northern Growth Pole) were recently approved after review, which clearly define the development and positioning goals, key industrial systems and layout patterns of the growth pole in northern Guangzhou. Influential document has great impact on Huadu. The public is discussing enthusiastically: Huadu's dream of becoming a comprehensive gateway and "meeting room" in the north of Guangzhou has finally come true, and the District is moving to the front stage.

On March 22, Huadu District held the Symposium on the Growth Pole and High-level Opening Frontier in Northern Guangzhou. Guided by the Publicity Department of Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, and jointly hosted by the Publicity Department of Huadu District Party Committee and the Institute of International Economics and Trade of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, the symposium invited experts and scholars from research institutions, high-end think tanks, and higher education institutions to brainstorm on topics focusing on the high-level opening up of Guangzhou, the high-quality development of the growth pole in northern Guangzhou, and the high-quality development of Huadu, and to offer suggestions for the in-depth promotion of the construction of the northern growth pole of Guangzhou.

According to the Plan, on the basis of the advantages of the large transportation hub of "Baiyun Airport-Guangzhou North Railway Station-Guangzhou International Port", efforts will be made to promote the construction of the northern growth pole into an international aviation open hub, an important pivot of the new development pattern of dual circulation, a demonstration zone for the development of the national air-rail integration industry, and a leading place in northern Guangzhou for high-quality industrial development by 2035. It is necessary to promote the progressive upgrading of the northern growth pole from a "transportation hub" to an "economic hub" and eventually to an "open hub", helping Guangzhou thrive with sources from the sea and the sky.

Attending the group discussion of the Huadu District delegation at the Fourth Session of the 16th People's Congress of Guangzhou, Guo Yonghang, Secretary of the CPC Guangzhou Committee, pointed out that building a growth pole in the north of Guangzhou with Huadu as the main body was of great significance to the high-quality development of Guangzhou; it was a strategy and a plan of high priority, and should be treated on the same level as building the eastern center.

Great strategy requires great wisdom. This symposium brought together well-known experts and scholars from the industry and universities to discuss the development plan for the growth pole in northern Guangzhou, and to provide an informed and enlightening timetable and roadmap for the achievement of the "trillion target" in the northern Guangzhou by 2035.

In recent years, Huadu District has continuously optimized the air-rail integration development demonstration zone, cultivated and developed new kinds of productivity, built the largest air-rail dual hub in the Greater Bay Area, promoted a 100-billion-level aviation industry cluster, and gathered momentum to lead in the traditional industries like automotive, electronics, and fashion and in the new energy industry, trying to be an energetic, magnetic and powerful force to promote the northern part of Guangzhou to become a new growth pole in Guangzhou.

He Chuantian, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Committee and vice president of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said that the strategic positioning and development vision of the northern growth pole of Guangzhou had been attracting much attention, and the University would give full play to its disciplinary and talent advantages as a new type of think tank, and provide specific ideas and suggestions for decision-making in this major strategy by building a collaborative mechanism integrating "government, industry, research institution, education institution and user".

Wang Jun, Dean of the Institute of International Economics and Trade at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said when interviewed that it was the right time to build a growth pole in northern Guangzhou, and that Huadu's strong industrial foundation, and the construction of a large international transportation hub centering Baiyun International Airport would help create a large platform for international opening, which would drive the development of modern service industry. Some institutional adjustments might also be made, such as the facilitation of customs clearance, to attract more foreign capital suitable for the development of Huadu.

Aligned with directions

Create a good business environment against benchmarksLi Gang, vice president of the China Association of International Trade, former vice president and researcher of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, share with the participants his views on several issues regarding the institutional opening up of the service industry. "To build a growth pole in the north of Guangzhou, it is essential to align with some important development directions of the nation.” According to his suggestion, the building of a growth pole in the north must be supported by new industries and new momentums, and it followed that it was necessary to do a good job in benchmarking the business environment in such aspects as industrial layout, infrastructure, development platform, and talent support, to create a good business environment and attract quality large projects.

International thinking

A new city calls for new concepts

Lin Guijun, former vice president and professor of the University of International Business and Economics, presented an analysis of the migration trend of China's products along the global value chain, in which a data informed introduction was given to China's global value chain dependence and the changes of China's competitive advantages in different products, to let everyone have a more intuitive understanding of China's position in the global value chain.

He believed that a true growth pole must have industries of independent competitive edges, and at least should exist as a peer, instead of a dependent, of the industries in Guangzhou. It was advisable to think internationally; with the development of remote office, Huadu might rely on the advantages of the airport to develop a community suitable for foreigners and domestic high-end people, create opportunities and space for them to communicate, and attract R&D persons, designers and other people who often work remotely, and then tourism may also consequently develop.

He believed that decentralized office was the trend, and Huadu could learn from other cities in the world in urban planning, and create new ideas to find a new way of its own.

Opportunities of the sky

Promote the opening up and cooperation of the "Northern Greater Bay Area +1".

"Ride with the trend and seize the opportunities of sky in urban development.” Yu Zongliang, Director and researcher of the Free Trade Innovation Research Center at China Development Institute, said that the world economy was facing the "fifth wave" of air transportation after ocean shipping, river transportation and highways, and that the growth pole in the north of Guangzhou must rely on the development of the airport town to influence and drive regional development.

He suggested that Huadu should learn from the advanced experience at home and abroad, plan the "big open platform" from an international perspective and a national height, and take the advantages of the construction of the new hub of the international open port in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to become "a new open port, a new living room of the Greater Bay Area, and a new national hub", and a true growth point in the northern part of the Greater Bay Area.

"It is necessary to promote the opening up and cooperation of the 'Northern Greater Bay Area +1' with high standards.” Yu Zongliang suggested that it was essential to coordinate the development of the administrative zones at one hand and the functional zones and economic zones at the other hand, and to coordinated and the relationship between Huadu and the Guangzhou airport and Baiyun District to achieve synthetic effect; with the "Guangzhou-Shenzhen cooperation" as the leading force, strengthened the "sea-side cooperation", that is, the cooperation with key regions and platforms such as the Golden Inner Bay; and deeply explore the value of the northern part of the Greater Bay Area as a border integration hub of the Guangzhou metropolitan area, and strengthen the "mountain-side and river-side cooperation". 

In terms of opening up and cooperation, Huadu should rely on the high-density routes of Baiyun Airport to ASEAN and the Guangning Connecting Line of the Guiyang-Guangzhou high-speed railway, strengthen the opening and cooperation to countries and regions in RCEP and along the "Belt and Road", to become an important hub for the Greater Bay Area to influence the Pan-Pearl River Delta and deepen opening up and cooperation with ASEAN and other RCEP regions.

Break the pressure and turn transportation advantages into economic advantages

Lin Chuangwei, Deputy Dean and associate professor of the Institute of International Economics and Trade at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said that as the center piece of the northern growth pole of Guangzhou, Huadu was under great pressure to achieve to the goal set for the northern growth pole that it should contribute 20% of the city's GDP by 2035.

How to pull it off? In the opinion of Lin Chuangwei, it required long-term thinking and transformation of Huadu's transportation advantages into industrial and economic advantages, in other worlds, to develop from a transportation center to an industrial center and eventually to an economic center. But in the face of the current pressure, the first thing was to secure big projects that might produce benefits as soon as possible. He suggested that Huadu aim at the big industries, focus on attracting investment from the "flagship" enterprises of industry chain, and continue to strengthen and supplement the automotive industry chain, introducing auto parts manufacturers to extend the industrial chain, and helping the development and transformation of Dongfeng's assets. It was important to take the advantages of the sound industrial chains and infrastructure to enhance business promotion and attract investment from new energy vehicle brands whose headquarters were not in Guangdong. Attention should also be paid to the electronic information industry; and based on the advantages coming from the vicinity to Baiyun Airport, effort should be made to develop industries whose products are small in size, high in value, and suitable for air transportation, such as the biomedical industry.

Lin Chuangwei suggested that Huadu should seize the big opportunity of cross-border e-commerce, promote the construction of Huadu as a highland for opening up to the outside world, and set high priority to attracting investment from warehousing, logistics and other related enterprises, with the goal to attract top cross-border e-commerce platforms in the country. It was also worth mentioning that efforts should be made to realize convenient transportation between the main industrial areas and the airport, open up rail transit between Huadu and downtown Guangzhou, because convenient transportation was very important for the northern growth pole that would become a place for large population, and industrial clusters.

Huadu should heap preferential policies to promote the development of air-rail interaction regions, should strive for the support of Guangdong province and Guangzhou city, and should apply for the establishment of a Pilot Free Trade Zone in Guangdong, because policy advantages would often become industrial advantages. Lin Chuangwei suggested that efforts should be made to make up for the shortcomings to enhance the attractiveness to high-quality enterprises, and to strengthen the coordination and interaction with Baiyun District, and closely focus on the layout along the Kongtie Avenue, striving to create a new town of northern growth pole with Kongtie Avenue in the core area that could be comparable to the key areas in the city center.

Grasp the key and play to the advantages of the airport to develop hub industries

“When it comes to building a growth pole in the north of Guangzhou, Huadu has difficulties, both short term and long term.” Yin Tao, vice president of the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences and president of the Guangzhou Urban Strategy Institute, stayed calm during the hot discussion of the Plan, and saw some of the current deficiencies and defects, as well as the pressure on high-quality development.

In his view, the most important thing of Huadu's in-depth promotion of the construction of the northern growth pole in Guangzhou was to further grow, expand and develop the airport. What Huadu must do was to tap into the advantages of the airport to develop a hub industrial system. He suggested that Huadu improve the service capacity and level of Guangzhou North Railway Station, develop it as a main pillar, and group Guangzhou North Railway Station, Baiyun Station, and the airport to form the largest air-rail hub in the Greater Bay Area.

Yin Tao also suggested that to solve the problem of short term difficulties, Huadu should strengthen ties with state-owned enterprises at all levels, strive for secure for the District the planning and settlement of projects from some state-owned enterprises in the manufacturing industry; should speed up the development of the platform economy, including the Internet platform economy and the platform for opening up to the outside world; and should strengthen cooperation with Southeast Asia, and the next move might be to seize the possible opportunity of building a free trade port in Nansha to incorporate the airport and cooperation with Southeast Asia.

Integrated development makes it possible for Huadu to become the sub-center of the world's fashion capital

"The northern growth pole can actually be divided into three parts, in the center is the airport economic zone, in the north is Huadu District, and in the south is Baiyun District.” Li Xiaopeng, chief economist of Zhongxing Dacheng Think Tank and president of the Institute of Industrial Economics, said that the starting point of planning all these as a whole was to solve the problem of integration between the airport and the surrounding area.

"The key point in the planning of the northern growth pole is the development of airport-based economy.” According to Li Xiaopeng, there were actually two driving forces for the development of the northern region; one was location advantage, and the other was hub advantage. The industrial development of Huadu and Baiyun Districts was mainly driven by location advantage before, and focus must be shifted to hub advantage in the future; advantages of location and of hub should be combined, taking into consideration not only the relationship with the city center, the relationship with Foshan, Northern Guangdong, and Hunan, but also the relationship with the airport; because the positioning and prospects of the development of northern Guangzhou must be closely connected with the airport, and only by making good use of the world-class hub resources, would the northern region have irreplaceable value in the strategic map of Guangzhou and the Greater Bay Area.

Li Xiaopeng said that the airport-based economy had three more important sectors, namely airport-based manufacturing, airport-based services and airport-based consumption. A large share of airport-based industries would fall within the scope of Huadu and Baiyun, and it was important to do a good job in the division of labor. In the north and west of the airport, which belonged to Huadu, the airport-based manufacturing, cultural tourism and consumption should have the dominant place. It was expected that the flexible manufacturing, R&D, design, and display of fast fashion consumer goods would quickly concentrate in the northern region, bringing the hope that Huadu District might become a new major gathering area for Guangzhou's urban consumer industry in the future.

"It is also a common airport consumption development model to build of a large-scale cultural tourism consumption base around a world-class airport.” Li Xiaopeng said that Sunac Cultural Tourism City should have more and richer cultural and tourism consumption formats, including e-sports, animation, cultural creativity, etc., to form a new entertainment consumption center relying on high-speed rail and the airport, which would also act as a service center for tourism in northern Guangdong. When Guangzhou becomes the fashion capital of the world in the future, Huadu will be the sub-center of the fashion capital of the world.

The experts and scholars took the pulse and offered their ideas for the construction of the northern growth pole of Guangzhou. Now that the blueprint is in hand, the layout of the pillars are taking shape, Huadu has moved from the back to the forward, and bright future is beckoning for the in-depth construction of the northern growth pole