Guangxi: 70 years on

Editor’s Note: Starting in May, the State Council Information Office began organizing news conferences for each province, autonomous region and municipality to give briefings about their social and economic development since the founding of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago.

During the Guangxi session held September 2 in Beijing, Lu Xinshe, secretary of the CPC Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region Committee, and Chen Wu, deputy secretary of the CPC Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region Committee and governor of the region, talked about Guangxi’s development with reporters.

Economic growth

Guangxi’s GDP exceeded two trillion yuan in 2018, increasing by a factor of more than 816 since the founding of the region in 1958. At that time the GDP was 2.45 billion yuan; the region’s per capita GDP passed $6,000 last year.

At present, there are ten industries in the region with an annual output value of hundreds of billions of yuan, including the food industry, automobile industry and machinery manufacturing industry. Taking automobile making as an example, Guangxi produces more than 2 million cars a year.

As for infrastructure, the total length of operational high-speed rail tracks in Guangxi is 1,771 kilometers, connecting the regions 12 cities and linking it to all the neighboring provinces. In addition, 91 percent of the counties in Guangxi have expressways. Located in the southern coastal part of China, Guangxi is home to many harbors and river ports, the annual transfer capacities of which were 250 million tons and 110 million tons in 2018.

Opening-up

Attaching great importance to its relations with Southeast Asian countries, Guangxi has continued to deepen opening-up and international cooperation. It has held the China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit for 15 consecutive years. Now, China plans to establish a pilot free trade zone in Guangxi and build the region into a new channel for international land-sea trade and a portal for financial opening targeting ASEAN.

People’s living standards

The per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents in 2018 was 32,436 yuan and 12,435 yuan, marking the region’s historic change from lacking basic necessities to a comfortable level of living.

From 2012 to 2018 8.25 million people in Guangxi were lifted out of poverty, with an annual average number of 1.17 million. The incidence of poverty fell sharply to 3.7 percent from the previous 18 percent.

Regional development

Many rivers flow through this coastal region that neighbors Vietnam. Guangxi is making full use of its geographic location and the potential of coastlines, rivers and border areas. Since 2008, the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone has maintained an annual GDP growth of 11.5 percent, contributing to over one third of the region’s GDP and constituting about 40 percent of its fiscal revenue and nearly half of its foreign trade. And the GDP of the Xijiang River Economic Belt in 2018 was 1.2 trillion yuan. In addition, Guangxi has been working to build a border economic belt in the hope of boosting development in border areas and benefiting local people.

Reform and innovation

Since 2012, Guangxi has implemented over 1,400 major reform measures involving government approval, the commercial system, the financial and taxation system, business burden alleviation and State-owned enterprises. Rural financial reform in a county of Guangxi is regarded as an example worth following in China. The region’s cross-border RMB settlement volume has retained a leading position among China’s western and border provinces for successive years.

Living environment

The quality of the ecological environment in Guangxi has also changed greatly. During the 2012-2018 period, energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP dropped by 24.1 percent. In 2018, the region reported that 91.6 percent of days had fairly good air quality. In addition, the quality and improvement of vegetation ecology leads in China. Guangxi’s forest cover and biodiversity also rank among the top. Guangxi is home to advancing green development.