"Baiyun Airport provides fast customs clearance services specifically for chip products, allowing clearance at any time and efficient completion of procedures within 24 hours, which exemplifies the government's high efficiency," said Hu Yining, Vice President of XPeng Inc.

On September 13, at the training session for party and government leaders of cities and counties across Guangdong Province on high-quality development capabilities and the themed program "Accelerating the Construction of a More Internationally Competitive Modern Industrial System," representatives from Midea, XPeng Inc., and Insta360 engaged in face-to-face dialogue with leaders from Jiangmen City and Rongcheng District of Jieyang City, conducting a special conversation about the business environment.

Three corporate representatives and two student representatives discussed innovation and overseas expansion, jointly exploring strategies for Guangdong's path toward high-quality development.

During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, China's economic situation may become even more challenging. How localities can leverage their industrial foundations to create distinctive, advantageous, and sustainably competitive modern industrial systems will be crucial for determining economic development.

For Guangdong, key questions include: How to implement new development concepts, serve and integrate into the new development pattern, and develop new quality productive forces according to local conditions? How to accurately grasp Guangdong's industrial development advantages and shortcomings, and promote deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation? The answers to these questions depend on whether Guangdong can accelerate the construction of a more internationally competitive modern industrial system.

To build a modern industrial system, city and county party and government leaders are crucial. Their strategic understanding, policy execution capabilities, and industrial insight directly relate to the implementation effectiveness of national and provincial decisions and the quality of modern industrial system construction.

Since 2023, Guangdong has organized annual collective "recharging" sessions for city and county party and government leaders. Through training and learning, these sessions aim to enhance leaders' theoretical knowledge and practical capabilities while helping them identify their regions' main directions and breakthrough points.

This year's training session was themed "Leading New Quality Productive Forces Development through Technological Innovation, Striving to Continue Leading Nationally in Modern Industrial System Construction." Participants included main party and government leaders from 21 prefecture-level cities and 122 counties (cities, districts) across the province, as well as leadership team members from relevant provincial departments. The goal was to comprehensively and multi-dimensionally enhance professional capabilities and practical skills, striving to become experts in their fields.

Through the training session, participants opened up ideas for high-quality development through theoretical learning, learning from experiences of other regions, and understanding industrial development pain points. This also brought valuable experience back to Guangdong's grassroots level for improving capabilities in industrial development and economic promotion, shouldering responsibilities and missions.

What do city and county leaders learn?

Currently, Guangdong Province is striving to sprint toward the completion of the "14th Five-Year Plan" and scientifically plan the "15th Five-Year Plan" development blueprint. However, to truly build a more internationally competitive modern industrial system, Guangdong still has many shortcomings and faces a series of challenges.

Luo Zhiheng, Chief Economist and Research Institute Director of Guangdong Securities, evaluated Guangdong's economy from multiple perspectives: Guangdong has achieved outstanding results in single-item champions and specialized "little giant" enterprises, but still has room for improvement; the problem of unbalanced regional development also needs to be addressed.

Whether Guangdong can address shortcomings and strengthen advantages largely depends on whether city and county party and government leaders can truly become a professional team that understands economics, technology, industry, investment attraction, finance, projects, and industrial parks. This is of great significance for ensuring that Guangdong's modern industrial system construction stays on track, maintains focus, and proceeds in an orderly manner.

During the two-day training, main party and government leaders from 21 prefecture-level cities and 122 counties (cities, districts), as well as leadership team members from relevant provincial departments, gathered at the Guangdong Provincial Party School to collectively explore and contemplate these issues.

"Guangdong first needs to break free from its original path dependence, address systematic shortcomings in innovation support systems, talent cultivation capability shortcomings, and incomplete development of venture capital and private equity. It must resolve the triple predicament faced by county-level investment and financing: weak financing side, inefficient investment side, and inadequate support side," Luo Zhiheng stated during the training session.

During specialized lectures, participants listened attentively and took careful notes, establishing exchanges with other participants. During group discussions, they engaged in brainstorming and heated discussions—how the Pearl River Delta can further promote deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, how eastern, western, and northern Guangdong regions can attract major projects and enterprises, how to better undertake gradient industrial transfer from the Pearl River Delta, and how to implement coordinated regional development in practice.

In discussions, innovative thinking emerged through repeated exchanges, transforming into solutions for development cases. Within just two days, the training session included one special guidance report, three specialized lectures, one group discussion, two experience-sharing sessions, and one interview-style teaching session. For participants who came from various locations for centralized training, this was undoubtedly an enriching journey that inspired reform thinking and clarified development ideas.

Tang Leijing, District Mayor of Gaoming District in Foshan City, told reporters that this was her second year participating in the training session. "Whether it's the special guidance report, specialized lectures, or group discussions, they all aim to help us consider the long term and plan for the future from the perspective of new development concepts and new development patterns, thinking about how to truly build modern industrial systems for cities and counties and how to truly adapt to local conditions," Tang Leijing said.

As Wang Weizhong, Deputy Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Governor, stated in his opening mobilization speech, this training session aims to help city and county main party and government leaders further strengthen their learning about modern industrial system construction and strive to become experts in their fields. Leaders should vigorously promote investigation and research, actively learn from advanced regions' good experiences, humbly learn from entrepreneurs and grassroots front-line workers, become a professional team, and work together to achieve greater effectiveness in modern industrial system construction.

What do companies need to take root in Guangdong?

Luo Zhiheng believes that Guangdong must accelerate the cultivation of more future industries and strategic industries, and must strengthen financial support and optimize fiscal support methods. In response, several companies at this training session coincidentally mentioned their practices in laying out future tracks and accelerating overseas expansion.

Midea Group not only maintains a leading position in home appliances but has also expanded its business to new industries such as robotics, smart energy, industrial technology, medical care, and smart logistics, increasing overseas market layout with a goal of raising overseas revenue proportion to 50%.

In addition to traditional automobiles, XPeng Inc. is simultaneously laying out flying cars and embodied intelligent robots. XPeng Inc. will invest 40% of this year's R&D investment in AI, building an AI ecosystem around computing power, models, and data.

"China's home appliance industry has experienced stages from imitation to following, and now has entered the innovation stage. The trend in the home appliance industry is very clear—everything is becoming AI-enabled and roboticized, leading global home appliances in innovation," said Zhang Xiaoyi, Vice President of Midea Group.

As a leading chain enterprise, Midea positions "technological leadership" as the top priority among its four strategic pillars, continuously increasing technological investment. Over the past decade, Midea's cumulative R&D investment has exceeded 100 billion yuan. In the first half of this year, Midea's R&D investment exceeded 8.8 billion yuan, with year-over-year growth exceeding 14.4%, leading the home appliance industry.

However, industries within a region and enterprises within industries must have close interconnections to form chains and networks, creating network effects. The core of such chains is leading enterprises and government chain leaders. To build a modern industrial system, both must work together to build the ecosystem.

"While enterprises continue to promote innovation, they also hope to achieve joint innovation with industry, academia, and research under the guidance of government industrial policies, continuously promoting the development of emerging industries and future industries," said Zhang Xiaoyi, Vice President of Midea Group.

For enterprises, creating a market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized business environment is the concrete embodiment of such joint innovation. Only by continuously optimizing the business environment can governments help create an innovation ecosystem.

He Xiaopeng, founder of XPeng Inc., has repeatedly expressed deep affection for Guangdong's business environment. The story of XPeng Inc. is undoubtedly a true portrayal and vivid footnote of Guangdong's excellent business environment.

However, as competition in new tracks becomes increasingly intense, the market has raised higher requirements for Guangdong's business environment. Hu Yining stated that currently XPeng Inc.'s product testing scenarios are concentrated in suburban areas, and the company hopes the government can provide more testing grounds for future industries or industries with rapidly updating technologies to support more complex scenarios and data testing.

Currently, Guangdong Province has 20.0019 million registered business entities, with the total number continuing to rank first nationally. But one question remains: How can Guangdong maintain economic development resilience, stimulate market entity vitality, and consolidate and enhance industrial competitiveness by optimizing the business environment?

"Industries are difficult to plan out; they depend on environmental nurturing and incubation," Luo Zhiheng believes. Behind the development momentum of strategic emerging industries and the visibility and leadership of future industries are the support of technology, talent, finance (venture capital and private equity), and business environment.

In Luo Zhiheng's view, at the city and county level, it depends on whether governments proactively provide services to enterprises rather than managing them. "Governments should provide certain factor support and guarantees for enterprises, and through government guidance funds, allow financial resources to enter districts and counties. The assessment methods for government guidance funds should be optimized, focusing more on medium- and long-term assessments to attract more patient capital to land. Governments should also dare to take certain risks to invest in future tracks," Luo Zhiheng mentioned.

How can county economies find the right breakthrough points?

As key nodes connecting cities and rural areas, counties are the "nerve endings" and important carriers for Guangdong's construction of a modern industrial system. County economies are a prominent shortcoming in Guangdong's high-quality development, but also represent enormous potential.

In recent years, Guangdong has implemented the "Hundred Counties, Thousand Towns, Ten Thousand Villages High-Quality Development Project" with "top priority," aiming to promote coordinated urban-rural and regional development in Guangdong and improve public service levels.

From 2022 to 2024, counties across the province achieved average annual sales revenue growth of 3.6%, higher than the provincial average annual growth level (0.1%) by about 3.5 percentage points. Among them, counties in eastern, western, and northern Guangdong achieved average annual invoice sales revenue growth of 3.8%, 0.4 percentage points higher than the Pearl River Delta region.

Looking ahead, how can Guangdong counties scientifically determine industrial development positioning, focus on resource endowments and industrial foundations, and adhere to the principle of "develop industry where suitable, agriculture where suitable, tourism where suitable, marine economy where suitable" to find the right main directions and focus points?

In the first half of the year, Boluo County's GDP reached 43.375 billion yuan, growing 7.2%, ranking first in growth rate across Huizhou City. Based on current development momentum, it is expected to break through the trillion-yuan mark in 2025.

Zhou Gengbin, Party Secretary of Boluo County, stated that Boluo's development experience can be summarized as focusing on industrial park construction, integrated development of industry-city-people, and industrial quality upgrading. Since implementing the "Hundred Thousand Million Project," Boluo has formed a county-level modern industrial system with next-generation electronic information, intelligent equipment manufacturing, new materials, and new energy (including new energy storage) as leading industries, achieving "three major changes" in industrial development—total expansion, structural optimization, and quality improvement.

This change is precisely due to the exploration of accelerating the construction of a county-level modern industrial system with industrial park platforms as the guide. For promoting industrial park construction, Boluo adheres to "four ones" reform: clarifying one characteristic industry, improving one management institution, strengthening one state-owned enterprise platform, and formulating one financing plan.

Zhou Gengbin stated that in the future, Boluo will also promote the integration of productive service industries with advanced manufacturing, integration of technological innovation with industrial innovation, and integration of digital economy with real economy, using the exploration of new paths for integrated development as the driving force to promote industrial quality upgrading.

For eastern, western, and northern Guangdong regions limited by resource endowments, how should they leverage the province's new round of counterpart assistance cooperation and industrial co-construction mechanisms to guide and promote orderly transfer of Pearl River Delta industries to industrial parks in eastern, western, and northern Guangdong?

With a cumulative total of 353 signed projects, 108 above-scale enterprises cultivated, and cumulative industrial output value of nearly 120 billion yuan... Since its foundation in June 2014, the Guangqing Industrial Park in the Guangqing Economic Special Cooperation Zone has transformed from fish ponds and wasteland into today's industrial highland and preferred destination for industrial transfer, with a comprehensive modern park featuring integrated industry-city development and urban-rural integration initially formed.

Zhuang Zhihui, District Mayor of Qingcheng District in Qingyuan City, stated that next, Qingcheng District will use industrial transfer as a fulcrum to expand the "Bay Area headquarters + Qingyuan base" industrial pattern. "After returning to my work position, I will transform what I've learned into ideas for planning work and measures for promoting development, leveraging regional comparative advantages to accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system with Qingcheng characteristics," Zhuang Zhihui said.