GUANGZHOU

Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province, is an important political, economic, industrial, and cultural center in the South China region. North of Hong Kong, Macau, and the South China Sea, Guangzhou’s location in the Pearl River Delta has long secured the city’s position as the southern gate of mainland China. As the origin of the ancient Chinese Maritime Silk Road, it was the oldest foreign trading port in mainland China and the only one that has never been closed.

Now, as one of the prominent cities included in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) plan and a key location on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Guangzhou is growing into a global transport hub, trade center, and a science and technology innovation center.

Guangzhou boasts of advanced infrastructure, including the third-busiest airport (Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport) in terms of passenger throughput, the fourth-largest port (Guangzhou Port) in terms of cargo throughput, and the most well-connected railway network in mainland China.

The China Import and Export Fair, or Canton Fair, is the most prestigious trade fair in China, and is held in Guangzhou every spring and autumn. A mass of merchants and foreign enterprises from over 200 countries and regions attend the fair every year.

Guangzhou also has the third largest number of national high-tech enterprises (over 11,000) and is home to the majority of the province’s university personnel and scientific and technological workers.

The 2018 White Paper on the Business Environment in China, released by The American Chamber of Commerce in South China, found that Guangzhou is the most popular investment city in China.

In 2018, over 30,000 foreign-invested enterprises had settled in Guangzhou. Overall, 297 of the Fortune Global 500 companies have set up 921 projects in Guangzhou. Of the total Fortune Global 500 companies, 120 companies have their headquarters or regional headquarters in Guangzhou.

GUANGXI

The BEIBU GULF The largest number of ethnic minorities in China, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The NEW ENGINES Guangxi's GDP reached 2 trillion yuan (296 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, a world away from the 2.4 billion yuan in 1958 upon its founding, when it had barely any industry.

The region is an important agricultural base of China, producing over 60 percent of the country's sugarcane, half of silkworm cocoon and 45 percent of timber. It witnessed fast industrialization over the decades, with new engines emerging in sectors including food processing, metallurgy, machinery and electronic information. It is now an important car manufacturing base, producing 2.4 million vehicles annually.

Tourism has become a pillar industry of Guangxi, which boasts the scenic town of Guilin. It recorded tourism consumption of 570 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2018.

The SOUTHERN GATEWAY Boasting both sea and land links with Southeast Asia, Guangxi has cast itself as an important gateway towards ASEAN countries. Its foreign trade was boosted by the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 and holding the China-ASEAN Expo from 2004.

ASEAN has been the region's largest foreign trade partner for 17 years in a row. Guangxi's trade with ASEAN reached 189 billion yuan in 2017 with an annual growth of 27.1 percent in the past 15 years.

Guangxi's Beibu Gulf is an important transit in the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor that connects western China and Southeast Asia with sea and rail intermodal routes. Ship routes link the gulf with over 200 ports in the world, including all the major ports in ASEAN.

Boosted by the booming border trade, Guangxi recorded 932.4 billion yuan in cross-border RMB settlement by the end of September, top among China's border regions.