The next "grab people", Guangdong has a big action!

At the kickoff meeting, the provincial party secretary said he would start the "one million talents convergence South Guangdong action plan", to come up with competitive salaries and jobs, to attract one million college graduates to Guangdong employment and entrepreneurship.

Why?

In the final analysis, the competition of the economy is not only the competition of industry, but also the competition of talents, and the competition of enterprises and projects.

More than just Guangdong, with the GDP report card of the 31 provinces and cities in the country in 2024 unveiled, the call for investment has sounded everywhere.

01 National Economic Report Card

With the release of Shanxi's GDP data for 2024, the economic report cards for all 31 provinces in the country (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) have been revealed.

Look first at the totals.

In order of GDP from highest to lowest, the top 10 provinces in China's economy in 2024 are, in order: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Henan, Hubei, Fujian, Shanghai and Hunan.

There are a total of two provinces with a GDP of 10 trillion, namely Guangdong and Jiangsu.

Guangdong, the nation's first 14 trillion province, has ranked first in the country for 36 consecutive years. Jiangsu, with an incremental GDP of 608.4 billion yuan, tops the list, with less than 300 billion yuan separating it from 14 trillion.

Shandong and Zhejiang also both exceeded 9 trillion yuan, ranking third and fourth in the country, respectively. Shandong, in particular, is just a foot short of 10 trillion.

Look at the growth rate again.

From the perspective of year-on-year growth rate, the economic growth rate of 22 provinces in the country, reached or exceeded the national average of 5%.

The top 10 provinces in terms of growth rate, in order, are Tibet, Xinjiang, Jiangsu, Hubei, Anhui, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Shandong, Sichuan and Chongqing.

Among the major economic provinces, the real growth rate was led by Jiangsu, Hubei and Anhui, which all reached 5.8 percent. Tibet and Xinjiang, respectively, ranked first and second in the country.

From a geographical distribution point of view, the Yangtze River Delta region showed strong growth momentum, and the central and western regions also performed well; relatively speaking, the growth in the northeast region was relatively flat.

The real GDP growth rates of Henan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces were all higher than the national average. Among them, Hubei's growth rate reached 5.8%. Among the trillion-dollar provinces in the west, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Gansu also saw growth rates as high as 5.7 percent, 5.8 percent, 6.1 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.

It may be difficult to fully reflect the whole picture of regional development based only on locally released data. Data from the Fifth National Economic Census (referred to as: Pentecostal data) provide a more accurate basis for assessment.

After squeezing out the "water," the GDP rankings of some of the top cities have changed.

Beijing and Shanghai remain the top two cities. Hangzhou and Suzhou followed, with GDP adjustments close to 100 billion, and Fuzhou and other cities also rose in the rankings.

Why such a change is important, there is a change in the economic census criteria: for the first time, the digital economy, platform economy and so on will be taken into account.

Combined with these two new criteria, the support of the economy can be found in the local industrial structure.

02 Local industrial support first focuses on the central and western regions.

In the central region, more representative, is Hubei and Jiangxi.

Hubei GDP exceeded the 6 trillion yuan mark. This is mainly due to the development of modern industrial clusters and high-tech manufacturing. At present, Hubei has 19 hundred billion industry, optoelectronic information, automobile manufacturing, big health three industries is into the trillion scale.

Jiangxi, on the other hand, has become the core hinterland of the region by virtue of its geographic location - close to the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other powerful city clusters. Pillar industries such as high-end manufacturing, biomedicine, electronic information and food and chemical industries have been formed here.

Next, the perspective turns to the western region.

The economic growth rates of Tibet and Xinjiang rank first and second in the country, respectively. These figures show the strong growth momentum in the central and western regions, as well as the advantage of latecomers.

Looking deeper, it is the effect of the strategy of transferring industries to the central and western regions.

In the northeastern region, Liaoning's economic growth rate has exceeded the national average for several quarters in recent years. This is closely linked to a new round of northeastern revitalization initiatives, at the same time, a large number of central investment, has become an important support for its economic growth.

In contrast, as a typical resource-based province, Shanxi still has room for improvement. The reason behind this lies mainly in the reliance on coal, iron and steel and their related industries.

As an important local industry, Shanxi's raw coal output in 2023 was 1,356.58 million tons, up 4.4 percent year-on-year.

A change in this sector could easily affect the overall economy. For example, Shanxi's cellphone production capacity has been reduced by 26.7 percent due to the transfer of Foxconn's capacity, and automobile production capacity has also been affected.

Of course, it can also be seen that Shanxi has made efforts to adjust its industrial structure. Cities such as Linfen, Jincheng, Jinzhong and Luliang rely on manufacturing to drive economic growth.

As a key area of the country's current support, emerging industries play an important role in activating the economy. The change in the increase and adjustment of the data of the five economic surveys is a validation of this point.

Taking Hangzhou, Suzhou and Fuzhou as examples, the digital economy can be seen behind the economic growth of these three cities.

In 2023, Hangzhou's core digital economy industry realized revenue of up to 1.87 trillion yuan, ranking first in the country, and its added value accounted for as much as 28.3 percent of GDP. With the digital economy leading the way, coupled with the e-commerce industry and the good performance of the real estate market, Hangzhou's GDP adjusted by nearly 100 billion.

Suzhou's three major industrial clusters, including high-end equipment, electronic information and advanced materials, have all reached the trillion-dollar level. The digital economy here is also at the forefront of the country, with the added value of the core industries of the digital economy accounting for nearly 18 percent of GDP in 2024, bolstered by the real economy.

Fuzhou, as early as 2000, also put forward the "digital Fuzhou" development concept. By 2024, the size of the digital economy here will exceed 800 billion yuan, accounting for more than 55 percent of GDP.

These cities have successfully activated their local economies and achieved significant growth through the development of new industries, especially the digital economy.

03 How to adjust investment promotion tactics

There is an important background that the global industrial chain is accelerating its reconstruction.

Samsung, Tesla and other foreign investors, one after another, will transfer production and manufacturing projects to Vietnam, Thailand and India and other countries and regions.

This, in addition to the cost and global supply chain restructuring, there is a deeper reason - China's manufacturing industry is moving towards high-end, intelligent, green transformation.

Industrial upgrading is an inevitable trend. Every technological and industrial innovation brings the opportunity to reshuffle the regional economy. Standing at the starting point of 2025, how should localities adjust their investment tactics?

First, we need to keep up with the pace of industrial transformation and upgrading.

For areas with a better economic foundation, you can boldly promote the upgrading of manufacturing.

For example, Dongguan, known as the "world factory", has introduced "on adhering to the manufacturing industry as the home to promote the high-quality development of the real economy of a number of measures", "on accelerating the promotion of the new type of industrialization of the implementation of high-quality construction of the international science and technology manufacturing city of strong opinions" and other policies.

In particular, on digital transformation, the government is encouraging and guiding SMEs to undergo the transformation in a variety of ways, so that they can truly feel the efficiency and profitability gains brought about by the transformation.

For resource-oriented cities, the most pressing task is to change the situation of "one coal only" and develop a diversified economic structure, so as to jump out of the "comfort zone" of energy and resource dependence.

In Inner Mongolia, for example, they follow the trend of new energy development, building photovoltaic, wind power as the core of the new energy system, targeted investment activities to promote the development of related manufacturing industry, the local economy to inject new vitality.

For the old industrial cities, the adjustment of industrial structure is also urgent.

Specifically, the promotion of new industrialization, by strengthening and extending the industrial chain, to create advanced manufacturing clusters. At the same time, it is also necessary to focus on improving the level of scientific and technological innovation of enterprises, and realize the deep integration of the innovation chain and the industrial chain.

Second, is to optimize the business environment. In today's investment competition, the business environment is good or bad, can affect the enterprise's willingness to invest, for the project landing can be in the local smooth growth of confidence.

From a number of areas of the start of the meeting, can be found in the "business environment" was mentioned many times. Shanghai has launched the 8.0 version of the business environment optimization program, which pays more attention to the actual feelings of enterprises, hoping to attract more investment and enterprises to move in.

In addition to doing a good job at the moment, it is also necessary to properly seize the policy opportunities.

With the change of the world situation, ASEAN, Northeast Asia into China's new diplomatic strategy direction.

Yunnan, Guangxi and Northeast China, which are adjacent to these regions, can make full use of this opportunity to grasp the project construction, strengthen the protection of elements such as land, plant, technology, talents and business services, so that the elements follow the project to strengthen the border trade and foreign investment, and strive to create a new high ground for opening up.

Overall, in the face of the global industrial chain reconstruction and industrial upgrading challenges, the local need to flexibly adjust the investment tactics, constantly optimize the business environment, keen to capture policy opportunities, for the local economic development to bring new growth points.