Pearl River Delta makes a breakthrough in resources "bottleneck"

With the high-speed economic development in recent years, many cities in the Pearl River Delta have gradually suffered from the shortage of resources and environmental pressure: There is little land for use in Shenzhen and Dongguan, so it is hard to arrange more projects there. The environment of Foshan, the "city of porcelain", can hardly bear any more pressure. The shortage of immigrant laborers last year showed an enormous pressure on the rising production cost .

According to analysts, it is significant that the Jiangmen city has recently been chosen to be the venue of the 2005 Forum on China's Investment Environment, sponsored by the Guangdong Provincial Government, the World Bank, State Information Center and the National Development and Reform Commission.

Although located at the same region, Jiangmen lags behind the economic development of other six cities in Pearl River Delta, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan and Zhuhai, with its per capital GDP about half of the region's average. And in comparison with the investment environment in 23 Chinese inland cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chengdu, from 2001 to 2004, the World Bank unexpectedly listed Jiangmen as one of the top cities in terms of the comprehensive strength.

Wang Shuilin, senior economist with the World Bank, said it was not reasonable enough to take investment volume as the main criteria to judge an area's investment environment. Instead, the investors' confidence in the development of the area should be the standard. Compared with the areas having rapid economic take-off, Jianmen has accumulated a fortune that cannot be measured by GDP. That is the effective protection for resources environment.

The bank's analytic report pointed out that listed as one of the areas with the most investment value, Jiangmen has benefited from its resources which can effectively support the improvement of investment environment and the sustainable development of its economic society.

Restricted by resources, the delta has started to focus on the once silent Jiangmen, which is also chosen to hold the annual Guangdong and Taiwan Economic and Trade Fair. According to insiders, the fair and forum held at Jiangmen show the investment interest here encouraged by the Guangdong provincial government.

In fact, Jiangmen has produced a huge attraction in capital market. More than 20 of the world's top 500 enterprises in the world, including the US Allied Signal, British BP, Japanese Miltsubishi Heavy and Swiss ABB, have invested in Jiangmen in succession. Jiangmen has attracted accumulated foreign funds valued at 8 billion US dollars.

The Pearl River Delta also casts eyes beyond Jiangmen which is a new attraction of investors. In April this year, Guangdong provincial government put forward a policy to encourage the industries in the region to move eastward, westward or towards the mountainous areas. There will be interest-sharing platforms for special zones in order to optimized and upgrade the industrial structure in the region.

Professor Chen Hongyu, a regional economist in Guangdong, pointed out the movement towards the surrounding areas shows a new thinking of resources. The old patter of the economic growth depending on high investment and energy consumption, are out of date. The surest way for the delta to maintain vigor is: to move some low level industries out of the delta to make room for high-level industries.

By Peoples Daily Online